borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, 2.35pm on BBC 2. Enjoy,Greg!!!
FAO: Fowlpenlooney!
- Thread starter borebage53
- Start date
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
I was being paid 'piece work' rates so when the 4th arrow landed in my back I got a bonus!
fowlpenlooney
Roofer
We must stop this war Pony that Walks! Too late Nataan Too Late!
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
"We are too old for War,Nataan. Your young men die,our young men die. Smoke peace pipe,drink whiskey,Nataan. Hallelujah,Hallelujah"!
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
Worth watching just for Ben Johnson as "Sgt Tyree" alone. A superb horseman in his own right and a Champion Rodeo star. He supplied all his own horses from his ranch for film work and always rode his own horse when filming his stunt scenes. Including the scene where he jumps his horse over the ravine to escape the chasing Indians. In Rio Grande he can be seen galloping while standing up on the backs of two horses performing the trick known as 'Roman riding' and also performing full gallop stunts side saddle.
He was first hired by John Ford as a stunt double in Fort Apache. During shooting the horses pulling a wagon stampeded with 3 men in it. Johnson,who "happened to be settin' on a horse",stopped the runaway wagon and saved the men. Told that he would be rewarded he just expected it to be more stunt work until Ford gave him an acting contract at $5,000 a week.
To film Rio Grande,50 Navajo Indians from a nearby reservation were hired to play the marauding band of Apache's. The film crew thought it better not to tell them this. Only one of them was picked to play the Army Navajo scout,Son of Many Mules!
He was first hired by John Ford as a stunt double in Fort Apache. During shooting the horses pulling a wagon stampeded with 3 men in it. Johnson,who "happened to be settin' on a horse",stopped the runaway wagon and saved the men. Told that he would be rewarded he just expected it to be more stunt work until Ford gave him an acting contract at $5,000 a week.
To film Rio Grande,50 Navajo Indians from a nearby reservation were hired to play the marauding band of Apache's. The film crew thought it better not to tell them this. Only one of them was picked to play the Army Navajo scout,Son of Many Mules!
fowlpenlooney
Roofer
The funny thing was Chris that one of those rejected by Ford because he didnt look the part was an Apache whose Grandad went by the name of Geronimo
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
One of the best books that you can ever read on the plight of the Native American tribes is Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. I first read it when I was not long out of school and it remains on my bookshelves at home still today.
In 1800 there were an estimated 30 million Buffalo roaming the Great Plains. The Indian tribes only took what they needed for clothing,shelter,food and medicines and no more. The fashion in Europe was for top hats so the Buffalo
!as well as Beavers,were hunted by white hunters for this 'lucrative' trade. Then came the Settlers,Wagon Trains moving West,Cattle Ranchers and worst of all the Railroads. The Kansas Pacific Railroad,as a marketing ploy,promised travellers that the trains would stop near any passing Buffalo herd so they could be shot at from the comfort of the railway carriage. Then the Goldrush and the Indian Wars with the US Cavalry.
By the last quarter of the 19th century the Buffalo on the Great Plains had by then been needlessly massacred and had dwindled to the last 1000 or so. The Prairies were white with Buffalo remains and huge mountains of bones were accumulated to be shipped back East to be ground into fertiliser!
The means that had provided life as they knew it for the Plains Indians had disappeared and the remnants of their nations were banished to the Reservations!
One of the first Indian tribes to encounter White Settlers were the Cherokee's in the Appalachian States. They were known as the "Civilised Tribes" and helped the earliest settlers to survive. They taught the settlers how to hunt,find the plants that could be used as medicines and to survive the changing seasons in the wild. Descendants of the earliest settlers still recognise this and the debt owed to the Cherokee. But the next successive influxes of settlements were of the more greedy and ever more hostile variety. And the Indians were viewed as "savages" to be got rid of and moved on. The 'Civilised Tribes' were eventually banished hundreds and hundreds of miles to Oklahoma in the infamous episode known as "The Trail of Tears". Forced to live on scant Reservations with changes to their ancient lifestyles and customs that would have been the then equivalent of finding themselves on the surface of the Moon!
I remember a line in one of Clint Eastwood's films where the old Indian Chief is heard to lament "The White Man called us the Civilised Tribes. We were known as the Civilised Tribes because we were easier to sneak up on"!
In 1800 there were an estimated 30 million Buffalo roaming the Great Plains. The Indian tribes only took what they needed for clothing,shelter,food and medicines and no more. The fashion in Europe was for top hats so the Buffalo
!as well as Beavers,were hunted by white hunters for this 'lucrative' trade. Then came the Settlers,Wagon Trains moving West,Cattle Ranchers and worst of all the Railroads. The Kansas Pacific Railroad,as a marketing ploy,promised travellers that the trains would stop near any passing Buffalo herd so they could be shot at from the comfort of the railway carriage. Then the Goldrush and the Indian Wars with the US Cavalry.
By the last quarter of the 19th century the Buffalo on the Great Plains had by then been needlessly massacred and had dwindled to the last 1000 or so. The Prairies were white with Buffalo remains and huge mountains of bones were accumulated to be shipped back East to be ground into fertiliser!
The means that had provided life as they knew it for the Plains Indians had disappeared and the remnants of their nations were banished to the Reservations!
One of the first Indian tribes to encounter White Settlers were the Cherokee's in the Appalachian States. They were known as the "Civilised Tribes" and helped the earliest settlers to survive. They taught the settlers how to hunt,find the plants that could be used as medicines and to survive the changing seasons in the wild. Descendants of the earliest settlers still recognise this and the debt owed to the Cherokee. But the next successive influxes of settlements were of the more greedy and ever more hostile variety. And the Indians were viewed as "savages" to be got rid of and moved on. The 'Civilised Tribes' were eventually banished hundreds and hundreds of miles to Oklahoma in the infamous episode known as "The Trail of Tears". Forced to live on scant Reservations with changes to their ancient lifestyles and customs that would have been the then equivalent of finding themselves on the surface of the Moon!
I remember a line in one of Clint Eastwood's films where the old Indian Chief is heard to lament "The White Man called us the Civilised Tribes. We were known as the Civilised Tribes because we were easier to sneak up on"!
Last edited:
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
John Ford always played fast and loose with reality for his "Hollywood" westerns. He loved to film them all in Monument Valley which was Navajo tribal land. The Apache never frequented these "low desert" regions. They were in the higher,arid,more mountainous deserts of Southern Arizona and those that straddled the Mexican Border. That's why it took the US Army,and latterly with Mexican help, 40 years to finally subdue the Apache tribes. They were the greatest "guerrilla" fighters the world has ever seen. Modern Military special forces employ some of their tactics still to this day.
The surrender of Geronimo in 1881 was the last Native Indian resistance in North America. Even when reduced to his last 30 or so followers he had managed to evade capture for a further year before he gave up!
The great cattle trails only lasted 25 years,one generation,before the Homestead Act and fences made cattle ranching static and with beef then being shipped out from the railheads.
60% of the earliest homesteaders on the Prairies gave up and went back East or on to Oregon and California. The greatest saviour for the settlers in their 'sod houses' who remained and endured the hard life on the treeless plains was the "Ogallala Aquifier". A layer of underground porous rock that retains water and lies below a vast area of eight US States. Wells could be dug down deep enough and water could be brought to the surface by erecting a simple windmill.
The Stagecoach a staple theme in Hollywood westerns were the most short lived travel option in reality. Only lasting a few short years until the Railroad expansions made them redundant and the Continent could be crossed in 6 days!
The surrender of Geronimo in 1881 was the last Native Indian resistance in North America. Even when reduced to his last 30 or so followers he had managed to evade capture for a further year before he gave up!
The great cattle trails only lasted 25 years,one generation,before the Homestead Act and fences made cattle ranching static and with beef then being shipped out from the railheads.
60% of the earliest homesteaders on the Prairies gave up and went back East or on to Oregon and California. The greatest saviour for the settlers in their 'sod houses' who remained and endured the hard life on the treeless plains was the "Ogallala Aquifier". A layer of underground porous rock that retains water and lies below a vast area of eight US States. Wells could be dug down deep enough and water could be brought to the surface by erecting a simple windmill.
The Stagecoach a staple theme in Hollywood westerns were the most short lived travel option in reality. Only lasting a few short years until the Railroad expansions made them redundant and the Continent could be crossed in 6 days!
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
The Navajo had been forcibly removed from their Monument Valley lands in what became a 350 mile 'Death March' across the Sonoran Desert to reservations in New Mexico. Even for a desert people it was a cruel privation where most of them perished en route. They signed a treaty years later that allowed them back to a reservation in their former homeland. So John Ford got to use some Navajo as fake Apache's in his films!
Last edited:
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
Navajo Nation,Northern Arizona, now has the most Covid deaths per head of population than anywhere else in the USA!
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
.......now we know why the Lone Ranger always wore a mask!
channys6thswan
Lingers Long On Cank Street
Trail of Tears worth a read as well, for the Cherokee story.
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
In 1981 I got ran off a Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina as I was attempting to transfer from Continental Trailways onto a Greyhound at the bus stop. I was spotted by a very irate 'war party' of Redskins who chased after me repeatedly calling me "Yellow Hair". About a mile up the road there was a hidden cave and we watched those Cherokees go galloping by!
channys6thswan
Lingers Long On Cank Street
I’ve got a photo of me standing in that Cherokee Reservation in the late ‘80s. ‘Medium Shoulders’ was the name they gave me.
borebage53
Knife & Fork pending
I was using "Wash-tee" & Go at the time!