The film is “End of the Trail,” a 1932 Columbia Western that
was the first U.S. film to depict the Indian Wars of the 1870’s from a
pro-Native perspective. Strikingly similar in plot and theme to the 1980
Academy Award winner “Dances with Wolves,” “End of the Trail” tells the story
of U.S. cavalry captain Tim Travers (Tim McCoy), who is unjustly thrown out of
the U.S. Army for allegedly providing guns to the Arapahoe Indians. Then an
attack by Travers’ former fellow officers results in the “collateral damage”
death of Travers’ son. With nowhere else to go, Travers joins the Arapahoes and
becomes part of their war council.
At a time when virtually all Westerns depicted Native people
as mindless savages, “End of the Trail” — despite at least one wince-inducing
line — shows them sympathetically and condemns the U.S. government’s systematic
breaking of all treaties with the tribes. Tim McCoy’s unusual background helps
explain why he made this film. In the 1920’s he was part of an oral history
project that interviewed Native survivors of the battle of the Little Big Horn,
thereby taking down the only firsthand accounts we have of it. The film’s
script by Stuart Anthony anticipates the pro-Native readings of the Indian Wars
by 1960’s and 1970’s historians like Native writers Dee Brown and Vine DeLoria,
Jr. and whites like Howard Zinn.
The screening is free of charge, but donations to Activist
San Diego’s community radio project, KNSJ 89.1 FM — an FCC-licensed broadcast
station in East County scheduled to go on the air in April 2013, and an
affiliated Internet radio site now operational at www.knsj.org
— will be requested.
For more information about this event, please contact Mark
Gabrish Conlan at (619) 688-1886.
For more information about the film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022856/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
For a review of the film by Mark Gabrish Conlan: http://moviemagg.blogspot.com/search?q=End+of+the+Trail
