Film and Genocide

5. Massacre and the Movies: Soldier Blue and the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864

Massacre and the Movies Soldier Blue and the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 paul r. bartrop Introduction The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period in which filmmakers extended the boundaries of what they saw as their role in helping to shape public awareness of major social and political issues. Films such as M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970) and Catch-22 (Mike Nichols, 1970), for example, were iconoclastic antiwar movies inspired by opposition to the Vietnam War (though neither were set during that conflict), in which the establishment was ridiculed and the heroic image of American greatness was shown to be far less monolithic than earlier images had portrayed. Appearing the same year as these two movies was Soldier Blue, a stereotype-breaking “revisionist Western” in which the usually heroic U.S. Cavalry on the frontier is shown in a far more contemptible light. Directed by Ralph Nelson, it is a fictionalized treatment of the events leading up to, and culminating in, the Sand Creek massacre in Colorado on November 29, 1864. Starring Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, and Donald Pleasence, the movie is a stinging indictment of white American expansion into Native American lands during the nineteenth century, and presents, in graphic terms, the filmmakers’ view that this was accompanied by merciless genocide. This chapter considers some of the more important issues revolving around the portrayal of the massacre in film. It explores the depiction of the historical 109 5 Sand Creek, seeking to ascertain just how far the film can be construed as accurate history or a fictionalized stereotype. The most fundamental of questions regarding filmic portrayals of historical issues can be considered in any such treatment. Is the movie true to the historical reality (so far as it can be understood) on which it is based? Is the movie useful in providing an understanding of what massacres can “look” like? And finally, how effective can graphic depictions of massacres—such as Soldier Blue—be for a new generation of viewers seeing such images for the first time? These are generic questions, all of which will be touched on here as a starting point for what can become broader areas of investigation at a later time. The Background The destruction of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas represents one of the greatest and most extensive human catastrophes in history. The pace and magnitude of the destruction varied from region to region over the years, but it can safely be concluded that in the two and a half centuries following Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas in 1492, probably 95 percent of the pre-Columbian population was wiped out—by disease as well as by deliberate policy on the part of the Spanish, the French, the English, and, ultimately, by the American-born heirs of those colonizing nations. The process was often characterized by violent confrontation, deliberate massacre, wholesale annihilation, and, in several instances, genocide. Many indigenous peoples in North America were completely, or almost completely, wiped out, for example, the Yuki of California (destroyed by white encroachment and sustained mass murder) and the Beothuk of Newfoundland (destroyed by population collapse following a steady withdrawal from the white presence). Given this, it is important that care is taken when employing the term genocide relative to colonial expansion: each and every claim must be assessed individually and on its merits. In some instances, genocide might be unequivocal; elsewhere, despite a sudden or enormous population collapse, the crucial ingredient of the colonizers’ intent would not appear to have been present. Often, populations declined as a result of diseases that arrived with the colonizers, and the deaths that occurred were not anticipated. On other occasions, lethal diseases were deliberately introduced for the purpose of wiping out a population. If we were to generalize—not an easy task when considering a continent-wide phenomenon occurring over several centuries—it could be said that colonial expansion in North America saw attempts at clearing the land of indigenous populations; of forcibly assimilating these same populations for racial, religious, or ethnic reasons; and of intimidating the survivors so they would retreat 110 paul r. bartrop 111 Massacre and the Movies before the advance of the colonizers so that capitalist economic development could take place. Overall, we are looking at a horrific case (or, rather, series of cases) of mass human destruction, in which millions of people lost their lives. And...