The Unquiet Men
Anthony Esolen on Those Who Are Leaving the Reservation
You speak to the white man,” says the Indian chief, his countenance scarred with age and battle. “You tell them, Big McLintock.”
The broad-shouldered rancher (John Wayne) and the Apaches are standing in front of a covered stage, where the dignitaries of the territory are meeting to round up these last Indian braves and take them to the reservation that the federal government has kindly provided for them. The Apaches are beaten, and know it. The world they loved is gone forever. There will be no war-joy, and no roaming freely across the plains with their women and children, in pursuit of the deer and the buffalo.
That taming of the Indian may be necessary for the growth of the United States, as the director of McLintock (Andrew McLaglen, under the inspiration of the great John Ford), seems to concede, grudgingly. But it may come at a terrible price, not to the Indian, but to the nation.
To Remain Men
“Tell the chief,” says the territorial governor to McLintock, “that there will be food on the reservation, and schools, and medicine. Tell them that they will be cared for.”
We may take the governor at his word, in this late and not wholly successful western. The Indians will be cared for, more or less. But Puma, the chief, cannot accept that promise. It is not that he believes the white man is lying. If only he were lying, Puma would have some hope! Instead, he explains to McLintock that he cannot accept life on those terms.
Long ago he had come within an inch of ending McLintock’s life—they were old enemies, back when McLintock was fighting to maintain his scrap of ranchland against man and the elements. That is why Puma has come to McLintock now to plead his case. They have a friendship or a mutual respect built upon those days of gun and arrow and fire and sword.
“Chief Puma,” says McLintock, “says that the life you promise his people may be fit for women, but it is not a life for Apache braves. If a man must be provided with his own food, then he is no longer a man. All the Apache ask for is the freedom to hunt as they used to do.”
Puma wants no more than that. It is already a sad compromise. The women and children will live on the reservation. The men will live there also, when they are not hunting. Raids on forts and settlements will cease. All the men are asking for, says McLintock to the citified, “civilized” half-men on the stage, is the permission to remain men.
Permission denied. The casual moviegoer will suppose that it is but another criticism of the foolish and miserable treatment of the Indians by their white conquerors. But it is far more than that. Director McLaglen is echoing the master here, and he, John Ford, had always cast a discerning eye upon the deadening blandness of a certain kind of civilization we take for granted. At the end of Stagecoach, when the young John Wayne walks away with his lady Dallas, the one-time saloon girl, it is to hard but real life on a ranch far beyond the reach of the local Temperance League. Says his friend the boozy doctor, with a glance at the sour-eyed old ladies, “The two of them will be spared the blessings of civilization!”
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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