Bloomsbury Publishing PLC | ISBN:1608191052 | File Type: PDF, 320 pages | File size: 73.Mb | Feb. 19th, 2013
Native American History: The Making of an American Legend In 1836 in East Texas nine year old Cynthia Ann arker was kidnapped by Comanches She was raised by the tribe and eventually became the wife of a warrior Twenty four years after her capture she was reclaimed by the U S cavalry and the Texas Rangers and restored to her white family to die in misery and obscurity Cynthia Ann s story has been told and retold over generations to become a foundational American tale The myth gave rise to operas and one act plays and in the 1950s to a novel by Alan LeMay which wod be adapted into one of Hollywood s most legendary films The Searchers directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne The Biggest Roughest Toughest and Most Beautif icture Ever Made Glenn Frankel beginning in Hollywood and then returning to the origins of the story creates a rich and nuanced anatomy of a timeless film and a quintessentially American myth The dominant story that has emerged departs dramatically from documented history it is of the inevitable triumph of white civilization underpinned by anxiety about the slying of white women by savages What makes John Ford s film so powerf and so important Frankel argues is that it both upholds that myth and undermines it baring the ambiguities surrounding race sexuality and violence in the settling of the West and the making of America
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