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| "Thomas Ince with Indians at Inceville" |
A surprise came in December of 1911, when the [New York Merchants Protective Company] announced that it was abandoning its simplistic cowboy-and-Indian pictures in favor of more spectacular Westerns. In their place came stories that were supposedly "Real and true to life." The move was a bold attempt to rescue Westerns from their primitive dime-novel status. To ensure realism, the Bison company had released the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch Real Wild West Show and its company of daring riders, horses, and stuntmen. The partnership, which came to be known as Bison-101, promised to elaborate historical recreations and an expansion from one- to two-reel subjects.
The successful merger with the Miller Brothers' Ranch was the brainwork of Thomas Harper Ince. Born in Rhode Island, Ince had grown up in the theater then later moved on to acting and directing in motion pictures. When the NYMPC hired Ince to revive their ailing Bison Westerns, the producer quickly went to work. He set up Hollywood's first assembly-line production unit, employing men and women to take charge of various departments and overseeing ten or more directors simultaneously. He created his own scenarios, or movie scripts (often in collaboration with other writers), and supervised the filming and editing of every story. Although many Ince films were actually directed by others, he took credit and placed his name on all as supervising director. His elaborate stock company of technicians, artists, and cowboys -- nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean -- came to be known appropriately as "Inceville."
The scenic mountainside community was dotted with tipis belonging to the Oglala Sioux Indians from South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. Ince had signed an agreement with the federal government to secure a large group of Indians, all of whom were under his daily care. Entire Oglala families of men, women, and children camped out along the mountain range for six months, when a new group would replace the previous one. By 1913, Ince's Indian performers were receiving $7 to $10 per week, plus expenses.
Life in Inceville had its occasional headaches. Ince complained that the Oglala might simply refuse to work: "They were stolid and non-communicative and had a strong dislike for doing anything that did not happen to appeal to them at the moment," he wrote. Pieces of the set would disappear into the Indian camp, and Ince soon discovered his Native American actors had an unexplainable attraction to bright-colored rpops. But bigger problems occurred when a few Indians regularly visited the local saloons and became intoxicated. Ince, worried that these incidents would prompt the government to cancel his contract, threatened the saloon keepers with prosecution if they continued to sell alcohol to his Indian performers.
Despite these obstacles, Ince and the Oglala made more than eighty Westerns together. From 1912 to 1917, Ince boasted, these Indians "appeared in many of my two-reel pictures and did some truly remarkably [sic] work." In 1916 Ince's team drew upon plans to build a two-story schoolhouse and offer classes in "the rudiments of the elementary subjects" to his Indian community. The Sioux tribe already boasted several Carlisle graduates who became candidates for assistant instructor positions at the school. "There is no reason in the world why these Indians should not be given an education," Ince mused.
[...]
Ince's Westerns left an indelible mark on the movies' Indian portrayals. His stories were epic in scope and took a close look at interracial relations. Unlike Griffith, Ince rarely bothered with idyllic Indian tales or moral themes; rather, his concern was for individuals and their relationship to class, culture, or race as a whole. Griffith's Indian stories were timeless, often with social messages and references to class conflicts. Ince's Westerns, on the other hand, adopted a James Fenimore Cooper outlook: His explanations were historical and his tone elegiac. Often, his films looked at the individual's futile struggle against social and political forces.
- Making the White Man's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies.
Aleiss, Angela. 2005.
