Dances With Wolves

“The strangeness of this life cannot be measured: in trying to produce my own death, I was elevated to the status of a living hero”

Dances With Wolves, a film from 1990, is about a man and his discovery of the Sioux Indians and their culture on the plains during the American Civil War. In the film, Kevin Costner directs and stars as John Dunbar, a lieutenant in the U.S. military. John sustains an injury in battle and is redeployed to a post of his choosing – a remote, abandoned Fort Sedgwick on the prairie. John chooses to stay at the fort, fix it up, and eventually make contact with a group of native Sioux that he had located. As the story proceeds, John wins over the friendship of the tribe and, in time, is assimilated into the tribe and marries another white who had been assimilated named Stands with a Fist. John, or Dances with Wolves, returns to the fort one last time to recover his journal before the move to the wintering lands only to be captured by the U.S. soldiers that are now inhabiting it. As he is being transported back east for interrogation, John is rescued by some of the Sioux and arrives at the wintering land to collect his things and his wife and walk away to secure the safety of the tribe.

The film Dances With Wolves is a story about the Sioux Indians of the Midwest plains and their struggles throughout life before and after the white men. The film attempts to show the viewer the settings, activities, and daily routines of a Plains Indian tribe. When comparing and contrasting this film to what we have learned in our books thus far, one can rather easily ascertain the conclusion that this film both follows and deviates from the facts that we have previously learned.

The setting of the film, a short-grass prairie, is true to what we have learned so far about that general location near the present day Dakotas’. The area in the film, as well as the historical area, is a wide stretching prairie of short grass, sectioned by rivers every few miles and a rather noticeable lack of trees. The setting also leads to the migratory patterns of the tribe and how they would shift during the winter months to a sheltered region with high rock walls and more trees for an auxiliary food source and winter’s reprieve.

The film goes into detail on such subjects of tribal dances, meetings, and decision making (all could be rather accurate for that specific tribe) but does make a point to show the tribe using every part of the buffalo and cursing the white men’s usage of the beast. As our books have shown(Comanche Empire especially), the Indians totalitary use of the buffalo carcass was more out of necessity and, depending on the circumstances, they would not spend the energy and time harvesting the animal if it were not feasible.

The film Dances With Wolves is a brief glimpse into the life and setting of the Sioux people in the plains. The film allows the viewer to observe the daily routine of a Sioux and how their lives were changed with the seasons and the encroachment of the white settlers. The film accurately shows settings, activities, and seasonal migratory patterns of the tribe and is a good tool for giving a student a mental image of the locations that are being discussed in Great Plains books.