But no, the Calvary mows them down with an early machine gun, and we watch as all of the Comanches are slaughtered, including a close up of Saginaw getting stabbed. …we watch the Comanche attack come over a hillside in the shadows, you know what it looks like, and there’s a moment as a viewer of “ohhh damn, watch out you silly railroad and calvary dudes, you’re about to get owned by some Comanches!” because they look so intimidating and like there are far more of them then the white guys. I also failed to mention that I’ve read the tipis in the film are done Comanche-style, and I can only assume the other details like the drums, dancing, etc. Tonto speaks it a bit too when talking to the horse. Throughout the film, besides the tipi exchange, the only scenes we see of the Comanche are them preparing for war, leaving for war, fighting in war, or dead.Įdit: I should add that there is use of Comanche language throughout, for commands, greetings, and small exchanges. I feel like his cameo was an attempt to show they had Native actor involvement despite the lack of any depth of character. My dad compared it to Civil War movies where they have the Black regiment march by in a scene as a “oh, see, we thought about the POC!” moment. …I was distracted by the fact that Gil Birmingham, who actually *is* Comanche was sitting there with face and body paint on and doesn’t. …Depp’s “accent” is hilariously inconsistent, and whenever he has more than a few words to say, it would veer into an almost stereotypical Italian-sounding thing… He’s also very much the mystical-magical-Indian, an early scene shows him in jail making his bird come alive by singing and flapping his arms, he talks to the horse (and the horse talks back), he talks about LR being a “spirit walker,” etc. I’m not trying to argue that the movie should have been 100% “authentic”–whatever that means–but to tout your Native involvement and have a central plot point be totally wrong just felt weird to me. Though they did get the stories kinda right, despite it being the completely wrong region/tribe. Despite the Comanche involvement in the film, there’s still a lot of problems with conflating all Indians together… Tonto from the start talks about being a “Wendigo hunter” and that the bad guys are “Wendigos” and that “nature is out of balance.” Wendigos are a Eastern Woodlands (Algonquian/Cree/Ojibwe) thing.
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