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154| Clifford E. Trafzer Dear Diary: Everyone knows that there are two sides to every story. The wrong side and the side those know-it-all critics write in Variety. Hum? What if we give them a true story? Something true, like: “Manic-depressive Native American boy wants to get married, but first goes on a rampage,killshiswould-befather-in-law,aMormon,kidnapshisgirlfriend,andinadvertently kills her desire to become a torch singer.” Now that’s a story! Note to Self: Call Robert Blake’s agent! Maybe he can play a manic-depressive killer. Happy trails, Hollywood Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here t t t t Clifford E. Trafzer Backstory. In 2006, the family of William Mike traveled in a caravan through the Morongo Indian Reservation on Field Road, winding their way up the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. Near the top of the hill, they passed the Catholic church and turned left into the old tribal cemetery. There they placed headstones on the graves of William Mike and his daughter, Carlotta Mike, both of whom died violently in 1909 from gunshot wounds. The family always knewthelocationofthetwograves,butuntilrecentlylackedtheresourcestopurchaserespectable headstones for their relatives. They prayed and sang over the graves in a memorial service that included ancient Salt songs, performed to help the deceased make their way north, the direction ofdeath.ThefamilyofWilliamMikerememberstheeventssurroundingWilliamandCarlotta’s death as if they occurred yesterday. It was only with the publication of Harry Lawton’s novel Willie Boy in 1960, and Universal Pictures’s release of the movie Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here nine years later, that a portion of this story was made known to the wider public. The film stars Robert Redford as Sheriff Christopher (Coop) Cooper, Katherine Ross as Lola, Robert Blake as Willie Boy, and Susan Clark as Liz, the love interest for Coop, although it goes nowhere. Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here| 155 All are good actors, but the film feels like 1969, tainted by a decade of civil unrest. It’s as if the filmmakers were banking on the audience to bring their disgust for the Vietnam War and their disdain for “the man” (read, the federal government) into the theater as they watched the film. Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here never achieves the ambience of a 1909 California reservation. Even the costumes worn by the actors are off. It’s also important to remember that in November 1969 a group of American Indians from the San Francisco Bay area began their occupation of Alcatraz Island. American Indians are fighting for their human rights, and tribal sovereignty over their reservation lands. Plot: The filmmakers worked with a script based on Lawton’s novel and historical documents ; director Abraham Polonsky and Universal Studio’s publicity department proclaimed that their movie was an accurate depiction of the tragic events surrounding William’s and Carlotta’s real deaths. Their claims notwithstanding, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here is mostly a workoffiction—appealingandenjoyableattimes,irritatinglybogusandcontrivedatothers.For whatever reason, both Polonsky and his writers (for whom Lawton served as an advisor) chose to ignore what Indian people knew about Willie Boy’s story, despite the fact that many of them worked on the film as actors and extras. This decision was especially reprehensible in the case of Katherine Siva Saubel, a respected Cahuilla Indian elder, noted historian, and accomplished writer, who was selected to play Carlotta’s mother. Saubel and her family were close friends of Segundo Chino, one of Willie Boy’s trackers, and had learned from him the finer points of the manhunt. Apparently Polonsky did not want this kind of indigenous knowledge to interfere with his simplistic adventure story, which is filled with clichés of good versus evil, and Indian savagery versus white civilization. The Mike family and other Indians view the Willie Boy incident as a great tragedy that few white people get right. Chemehuevis and Southern Paiutes explain that the real story is one of love—not lust, liquor, and arrogance, as portrayed in Lawton’s book and Polonsky’s film. AccordingtoChemehuevielders,WillieBoylivedinChemehuevisValleyontheCaliforniaside of the Colorado River. He left the area as a young man and moved west, residing in such towns as Victorville and San Bernardino. Eventually Willie Boy moved in with his grandmother, Mrs. Teacup, at the Indian village at Twentynine Palms, which Chemehuevis shared with its original inhabitants, the Serrano Indians. William Mike also lived in Twentynine Palms, serving as a community and religious leader. Mike had a very large family of boys...

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