mind boggling question for ANYONE whos watched a western!

okay this absolutly boggles my mind, i recently watched a few of the old 1960s westerns

you know the type where they are traveling through `injun country`, and eventually you have the scenario with the cavalry pinned down behind an overturned wagon and the indians riding around them..

what i cant figure out is this

in EVERY SINGLE one of those westerns (im refering to proper westerns not the spagheti clint eastwood style westerns which in my opinion are incredibly boring), the indians ALWAYS ride around in circles wooping, and are picked off one by one.
you often have like 5 men and an 90 year old wagon driver hold off a horde of like 30 indians!

its impossible no way would it have happened in real life.

ive studied a ton of native american war history, and the one major thing they had which won them many wars, was the stealth, fast movement, and element of suprise.... i really doubt in the custer war they just rode round in circles for hours while custer picked them all off one by one!

so yes, i just simply dont get why those old westerns are incredibly one sided.. for example the cowboy will ALWAYS defeat the indian in a one on one. he`ll always effortlessly overpower him and send him flying over his shoulders..

and of course like ive said before.. the mind bogling half a dozen cowboys behind a wagon holding off thousands of apaches.sioux, is just crazy!

were people really that `dumb` in the 40s/50s/60/s that they thought it was realistic?

anyway id love to get some thoughts on people whove watched the old westerns and wondered the same thing

Also, did you notice how they could fire off 50 shots without needing to reload? I've always hated movies like that. There's nothing like having your people portrayed as ignorant savages. Anywho, I think that you'd like this book: Celluloid Indians. It's a very informative read and shows how Indian people are portrayed in films.

Im sure if you wanna get technical there are many differnt things you could point out that may not fit with reality =p its just a movie...gotta have some fun scenes or else movie be pretty boring lol. I wanna see 20 cowboys vs 500 indians in a chase. With kung low blade cowboy hats. 50 cal guns and air support . loool

Its the same as the guy who gets shot on a balcony, bumps into the rail (which splits like it were made of air), and the guy does a perfect forward roll. It's "movie science", "movie physics", "movie logic", depending on what applies, and it hardly ever makes sense.
It's like the bomb timer that always stops on 0:01 and the crashed car that always seems to explode. They're all overly used cliches, and most if not all of them should be retired. At least for a decade or so.
I was watching a movie the other day where a plane crash lands due to the fuel running out, yet it still explodes into a mega fireball, leaving a stream of burning debris as it crashes to the ground.
Sometime realism is suspended a little too much, especially in those old movies, and especially when it came to minority depictions.

S&F because I love movies. Cliche or not.

I'm not sure that people were dumber, but maybe less critical.
Of course I've wondered the same thing before too

im refering to the scenario you know where cowboy goes to the lake for a drink, sees an indian with a knife, dodges the knife throws him over his shoulders and woopteedoo sticked the knife in the indian

in real life, im convinced the indian would have been far more agile and stronger than the cowboy, these are natives who day one were taught the saddle, and how to fight!

by the way i cant remember a single western where a handful of cowboys/soldiers holding off apaches actually die in the end! they always escape, or the cavalry come in time.

the thing is, one indian tactic WAS to circle the enemy, but i doubt it was to simply ride around for an hour going `woop woop` whilst being picked off by guns

reply to post by rabbigoldstein


In real life the "cowboy" probably would've been black, and (not that this has to do with his race) wouldn't have seen the "indian" until it was too late.

reply to post by rabbigoldstein


Propaganda.

Nothing on television can be trusted. The world is real, not t.v.

The whole cowboy and Indian thing was portrayed the way it was as to not hinder patriotism. Wouldn't it make Americans feel guilty to watch programs telling the truth? About the many lies and broken promises of the "white man," about the Trail of Tears... about utter genocide of the Native Americans by the early European settlers.... the fact this entire country was stolen... and the atrocities go on and on. This would make horrible programming, because people would be overwhelmed with guilt and sympathy for the natives. That's why it's called a "television program".... you program the people how to think and feel.

Most Cowboys were either Black, Mexican, or Native American, as "Cowboy" work was considered not befitting of Whites of the time.

this one is hillarious, forward it to 1.35 where the fun begins, a stagecoach of 5 men and a woman HOLD OFF 30 plus sioux!
and the old man fires and somehow shoots two guys off their horse with one shot!

"White man" was not solely in regards to "cowboys." White man, as in what the Natives called European settlers and colonists.

In regards to western films, the Indians were painted as blood thirsty savages that launched unprovoked attack. But the story writers leave out the facts of why the Native Americans were so angry in the first place. Steal my land, rape my women, commit genocide against my people, and speak lie after lie... I'll scalp me a few "cowboys" too.

Propaganda.

reply to post by rabbigoldstein


That was entertaining, but in the defense of the movie, at that range that Coach gun could have hit two riders at once.
You've gotta love the classics though, and that green-screen work was priceless.

Originally posted by Mactire
reply to post by rabbigoldstein

 

That was entertaining, but in the defense of the movie, at that range that Coach gun could have hit two riders at once.
You've gotta love the classics though, and that green-screen work was priceless.

i know, to be honest ive been recently watching a load of classic movies, to kind of bring myself to `happier times`.. but then again, the amount of things historically and logically wrong with the classic western is shocking

ppfft at 1.20 a guy gets an arrow in his chest, and then burps/coughs! and dies LOL

Ummm.....

The westerns are recreating a turning point in the pacification campaigns against the Native Americans; particularly "Red Cloud's War." The two battles they are re-creating are the Hayfield Fight, and especially the Wagon Box Fight

Incidentally, for mounted archers, the best tactic really is to ride in circles around your cornered opponent. If you hunt, then you know that shooting a running target in profile is the most difficult shot; while a head-on shot is the most stable target (steadily getting larger and larger in your field of vision). Even more, the cornered defender has to expose himself for several seconds to aim with the most common technique called "pass through." This allows one of your confederates somewhere else on the circle to shoot him in profile (and he isn't moving!).

This is the exact tactic used by the mounted archers of the Mongol "Golden Horde." So the technique has a lot of positive history behind it.

As a matter of fact, the two battles I linked to above were the turning point of the Indian Wars. both fights took place on nearly the same day; the "cowboys" had just received Springfield model 1866 repeating rifles. The Indians should have quickly overwhelmed the whites, but were dumbfounded by the new rifles, and were so shocked they didn't even think of changing their tactics until it was too late.

In the Hayfield Fight, 25 whites fought 500-800 Indians, with 3 anglo fatalities

In the Box wagon fight, the "cowboys" lost 5 dead and 2 wounded. The "indians" lost 60 dead and 120 wounded, by best estimate.

Those ratios are in line with US/UK forces in Iraq. Fairly typical when one side has technology that a quantum leap ahead of the other. Likewise, the ratio of fatalities in World War II was one dead American for every 29 dead Japanese. That kind of skew is typical of a war that results on a surrender---as was often the case with various Indian tribes.


All the best.

Originally posted by rabbigoldstein
im refering to the scenario you know where cowboy goes to the lake for a drink, sees an indian with a knife, dodges the knife throws him over his shoulders and woopteedoo sticked the knife in the indian

in real life, im convinced the indian would have been far more agile and stronger than the cowboy, these are natives who day one were taught the saddle, and how to fight!

by the way i cant remember a single western where a handful of cowboys/soldiers holding off apaches actually die in the end! they always escape, or the cavalry come in time.

Totally agree with you! The Indian would've been much fitter and stronger due to a lifetime of exercise and learning to fight hand to hand from an early age. Also I think their diet would've been superior to cowboys (everyone knows all they ate was bacon and beans!) so they would have more energy than cowboys too. I look at those movies as a bit of comedy now, but to be honest there was a fair bit of racisim in those old films and thats prob why the indians were portrayed so badly.

Originally posted by 3finjo

Totally agree with you! The Indian would've been much fitter and stronger due to a lifetime of exercise and learning to fight hand to hand from an early age. Also I think their diet would've been superior to cowboys (everyone knows all they ate was bacon and beans!) so they would have more energy than cowboys too. I look at those movies as a bit of comedy now, but to be honest there was a fair bit of racisim in those old films and thats prob why the indians were portrayed so badly.

I grew up doing farm labor, and it was also a "lifetime of exercise." Working with horses is some of the most demanding work there is, regardless of whether your skin is "red" or "white".

Some of you believe that "most cowboys were not white." In fact, there were only 4 negro cavalry regiments (9th,10th, 24th and 25th), and all but one of them were posted in Texas, in the Big Bend country. Hispanics were generally not enlisted in the cavarly, so most of the fighting was with anglos (although at Little Big Horn, 75% of the combatants had at least one Native American grandparent).

I don't know if you have ever traveled in the developing world; but if you have you know that US whites are often head and shoulders above other populations, in part due to generations of good nutrition. In the Middle East and Far East, I was 9 inches above the average adult male. Statistically, that is a significant difference in personal combat.

Because it's really hard to film in pitch black darkness, when they'd really attack...

Originally posted by Gazrok
Because it's really hard to film in pitch black darkness, when they'd really attack...

actually its a known fact most indian tribes wouldnt attack at night, they believed the spirit of their dead wouldnt be able to find their way to heaven

reply to post by rabbigoldstein


Intriguing. Sucks though for them, as night would have been an excellent counter to the calvary's tech.