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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3724 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 14, 2024

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Obviously as a Brit I'm consuming the fictionalised version of the American frontier from a long distance, but in the Cowboys and Indians mythos I grew up with Indians were always Worthy Opponents in the TVTropes sense. I assume this idea dates back to the golden age of the Western as a movie genre because that is where the tropes come from.

if we're dealing with mythos, this scene might be a worthwhile corrective.

Yeah, there was a brief "lone ranger and Tonto" period where the mythology was sanitized, which was used to launder support for AIM and other Indian terrorist groups in the 60s-80s.

Didn't the warriors of various Indian tribes routinely take hostages/captives and kill/torture them?

On the east coast colonial period, yes. Horrible drawn out tortures. Being seared to death with hot coals. Skinned alive one small strip at time. Fingers broken and twisted the wrong way. Completely senseless. And not even always during warfare. They'd take hostages and get to work on one as an example to the others.

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