In a course I sometimes teach called "Literature of the American West" my students read Larry McMurtry's wonderful short biography of Crazy Horse. Because Little Big Horn was part of Crazy Horse's story, McMurtry devotes a few pages to that battle and one of its other "stars", General George Armstrong Custer. McMurtry briefly mentions the best known film version of Custer's part in that battle, They Died With Their Boots On. Out of curiosity I watched it a few years ago. It is from 1941, starring dashing Errol Flynn as Custer and Anthony Quinn as Crazy Horse (let that casting choice speak for itself). The most fascinating part of the film, for me, are its many deviations from history. We expect liberties to be taken in Hollywood versions of how things went down, but when it comes to sanitizing the record, this tall tale is in a class by itself. The real life Custer was, of course, infamously brutal toward Native Americans. In this film, Custer is - get this - a man of conscience, an INDIAN ADVOCATE, endeavoring high-mindedly like a character played by Alan Alda to prevent some unscrupulous businessmen from exploiting the Sioux and Cheyenne. This is a little like making a version of All the Presidents Men with Nixon himself as Woodward and Bernstein. In the end it is the wickedness of backstabbing profiteers - not Custer's own vainglory and recklessness - that brings him to his fateful encounter on the banks of the Little Big Horn.
Hooey on steroids.
I say all this today because the makers of a film from 80 years ago knew somehow that dramatizing anything close to the real behavior of Custer would make him a villain. That's how long - at least - that white American tastemakers have known that there's no honest way to valorize how Americans of European descent took over this continent.
So it really is past time to drop Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day. We've known better for a long time.
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