Alright to start off i’m really really really sorry that its sooooo late but i’ve had major problems posting it 
but here it is 
sorry again
The Englishman’s Boy
The novel as a whole provides a lesson that “the pass cannot easily be dismissed” which is observed by Harry Vincent at the end of the Novel. This also revolves around a quote from George Orwell – “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” The novel is based on The Cypress Hill Massacre from the view to the Englishman’s Boy. The novel is divided into a second story line which is about a man, Chance, trying to write a Western in Hollywood which will make the movie of the century. He is basing his film on the Cypress Hill massacre and sends out a young man, Harry to find another man named Shorty McAdoo to elaborate the story and to act in the movie. These two stories blend together showing how when in people in the present talk about the pass, the truth is told, but not the whole truth.
The Cypress Hill Massacre all started out with a bunch of Wolfers, Americans dealing whiskey on the Canadian Borders, believing that an Indian named Little Soldier from the Assiniboine tribe stole over 20 horses from the wolfer’s camp one night. They go to this tribe and murder this boy and put his head on a stake. This was considered more then just a White & Indian war.
“Lost your horses?”
“Had 20 of them lifted,” said the redhead. “Camp’s five miles from here up on the Teton. Didn’t think there was any need to ride night-herd so close to Benton, but we was wrong. Goddamn Indians would steal horses stabled in your front parlour.” […] “We’ll get them pelts in right smart and we’ll get on the trace of them horses eight smart, and we’ll spank them red scamps right smart, won’t we boys?” […] “Your just looking for an excuse to take a crack at them.”
(Vanderhaeghe, #45)
- [Ellipses mine]-
During those times there was so much hatred for the Indians just because they were of a different race. The Whites would over power the Indians and they were treated quite unfairly. Killing people and decapitating a man just for horses is a true sign of hatred and discrimination.
Indians during this area were mistreated and when stories are told about the western days “Indians are there, but not really there”. It is told how horses were stolen and men were killed by these “savage” Indians but nothing is told about how Indians suffered just as much but they are not know as people but as enemies, and enemies are not human.
“That is how we must present the girl,” he says. “I envision her as a sort of Indian Samson. To destroy his captors he pulled down the temple on his own head. If she were to set fire to the building, that would be entirely in keeping – psychologically speaking- with the point we must make.” […] “But the girl didn’t set fire to the post,” I say stubbornly, clinging to the irrefutability of fact. Chance’s mouth twists with impatience. “Don’t be willfully obtuse,” he says angrily. “I have explained to you. This picture is about psychological truth. Poetic truth. Poetic truth is not journalism.” […] “Rewrite it. Change the girl. The enemy is never human.”
(Vanderhaeghe, #251-256)
- [Ellipses mine]-
Chance is making his movie based on the facts from The Cypress Hill Massacre. Throughout his writing of his film he changes a few of the facts that made the White Americans look bad to making the Indians look bad. One example would be a White American burning down the post but changes it to an Indian Woman that did it because she was gang raped by the Americans. When in the facts she was raped and killed afterwards. This related back to Indians being mistreated and hated in Westerns, telling the truth but not the whole truth and that people in the present controlling the past. How it can be easy to change stories of the pas to make one race look superior to the other.
Vanderhaeghe is known for showing in his novel how the Indians were discriminated even though it is based on the views of White Americans which is quite rare in Western writings.
“We can borry teams from I.G.,” said the man in the slouch hat. “We’ll get them pelts in. I didn’t freeze my ass all winter skinning carcasses to get my carcass skinned come spring.”
(Vanderhaeghe, #45)
This shows in true history the Wolfers would hunt down the buffalo and kill them for there meat, this would take away from the Indians which would cause starvations. Many people complain that this is no grave matter since we are stronger so we get more food but the difference is that the Indians do not waste the Buffalo. They eat anything that is edible and use the rest for utensil and hunting weapons compared to the Wolfers who would kill and eat the meat that just looked good and left the rest to rot but knowing that the Indians would come along and pick up the rest of the buffalo the Wolfers would poison the buffalo thus killing more Indians in one shot.
There was also much discrimination during this era, and as mentioned before, killing Indians is like crushing a mosquito. Nothing is meant of it.
“Fifteen hundred dollars,” he says. “Now I know the going rate on a dead Indian. Near fifty dollars a head.”
(Vanderhaeghe, #204)
For Chance’s movie he needed Indians to “reenact” some scenes which mean getting Indians to play in the film and hoping not to get shot during those scenes and since a dead Indian was only fifty dollars it was in his budget. Vanderhaeghe is not afraid to describe these discriminations in his novel.
Yes Indians were discriminated but they weren’t all that innocent and the Americans weren’t all that bad. Crimes and killings were done on both parts.
For a brief time the Cypress Hills Massacre had its day in the sun; members of the parliament rose in the House, hotly denouncing the wolfers as American cutthroats, thieves and renegades. Nobody seemed to mention that among them were Canadians cutthroats too. Those few paragraphs always pointed to one result of the massacre. The Canadian government formed the North West Mounted Police, sent it on a long, red-jacketed march into a vast territory, established claim to it. A mythic act of possession.
(Vanderhaeghe, #326)
Canadians are always known for being the helpers and the “nice people” that never do anything wrong. This might have been between the Americans and Indians but they are considered Canadian also and among the Wolfers there were Canadians doing the dirty trading on this side of the border also.
Throughout the making of the Western film Chance and Harry fight over the facts given to make the movie and what it said in the books and facts that they have.
“The novelist has a single task only: to construct a coherent picture, one that makes sense. The historian has a double task: he has both to do this, and to construct a picture of things as they really were and as they really happened”
(Vanderhaeghe, #246)
This shows that since film makers do not have the same acquired skills as a historian they must chance some facts to make history interesting.
In the case of the Englishman’s Boy a few events such as saying that George Hammond starts the Cypress Hill Massacre by shooting first when it truly was not him. Having Ed Grace shot in the throat by an arrow when in real history it was a bullet. Also decapitating the “Little Soldier” and putting his head on a stake when it was never mentioned anywhere so it could have been a tribal leader which theoretically makes more sense. This related back to an author changing the facts to make their story more interesting.
Chance had such a vision of the “American Dream” and the “American Image” that the truth in his movie was not essential. All he wants is that perfect motion picture.
Why have the American people produce no great art? The Germans gave the world music. The Romans their architecture. The Greek their tragedies. WE recognize the soul of a people in their art. But where is the American soul? I asked myself. Then it dawned on me. The American soul could not find expression in these old arts because the spirit of American people was not compatible with them, could not be encompassed in them.” Chance shoots me a victorious look. “You see? The American spirit is a frontier spirit, restless, impatient of constraint, eager for a look over the next hill, the next peek around the bend in the river. The American destiny is forward momentum…. What the American spirit required was an art form of forward momentum, an art form as bold and unbounded as the American spirit. A westering art form! It had to wait for motion pictures. The art form of motion!”
(Vanderhaeghe ,#108)
Chance is so focused on convincing himself that it’s all about America giving motion picture to the world. The truth is minimal to him when it comes to the “American Spirit”
Images take root in your mind, hot and bright, like an image on a photoplate. Once they etch themselves there, they can’t be obliterated, can’t be scratched out. They burn themselves in the mind. Because there’s no arguing with pictures. You simply accept or reject them. What’s up there on the screen moves too fast to permit analysis or argument. You can’t control the flow of images the way you can control a book — by rereading a chapter, rereading a paragraph, rereading a sentence. A book invites argument, invites reconsideration, invites thought. A moving picture is beyond thought. Like feeling, it simply is. The principle of a book is persuasion; the principle of a movie is revelation.
(Vanderhaeghe ,#107)
Showing the example of the Cypress Hill massacre being alternated to create a “more interesting” movie relates back to, whoever controls the present controls the past. This shows how easily the past can be alternated and that there is no such thing as “true history” since no one from the present has been there before so we cannot know how people felt or what they really were going through, just like the Indians. Films are always based on facts but not the truth.
Reference
Websites:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7011/is_67/ai_n28757594/pg_16?tag=artBody;col1
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/1984.html
http://www.saskpublishers.sk.ca/sampler/spotlight/guy2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Englishman’s_Boy
Book:
Vanderhaeghe, G. (1996). The Englishman’s Boy. Toronto, M&S
