I agree, but include this essay for those interested.

—Bernie Drew

Mohicans were first depicted in motion pictures with the silent Pathé picture A Prisoner of the Mohicans in 1911 and Vitagraph’s Indian Romeo and Juliet the next year. The Mohican’s Daughter came from American studio in 1922. The Last of the Mohicans, a natural for film treatment, was an Associated Producers offering in 1920. United Artists filmed the James Fenimore Cooper novel again in 1936. The Last of the Redmen (Columbia, 1947) and The Iroquois Trail (United Artists, 1950) also had Mohican characters. Two other books in Cooper’s fiction series provided movie plots: The Pathfinder (Columbia, 1953) and The Deerslayer (20th Century Fox, 1957). The Last of the Mohicans was filmed one more time in 1992 (Morgan Creek Productions), with Russell Means as Chingachgook and Eric Schweig as Uncas. And Daniel Day‐ Lewis as Hawkeye and Madeleine Stowe as Cora.

All of these pictures depicted Mohicans — though not ones from Stockbridge, Mass.

The only picture with an historic Stockbridge character is Northwest Passage (1940), based on the novel by Kenneth Roberts and spotlighting the heroics of Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) and his Champlain Valley Rangers in the 1750s during the French & Indian Wars. Konkapot (played

by Andrew Pena), “the singing Indian” and one of Rogers’ guides, is depicted as a drunken guide. Among Konkapot’s few lines: [holding stomach] “Konkapot … sick … Indian! Konkapot … so … so.. sick!”

Actually, Rogers, who was keen to adopt Indian woodland and fighting techniques, was far from being an Indian hater. Captain Jacob and others enlisted with Rogers more than once during the campaign. Konkapot did not serve with Rogers, though his son Robert Nungkauwaut did.

As film historian Michael Hilger has commented, “We all know that in the fictions of literature and narrative films, any correspondence to real life is ‘purely coincidental.’ However, we must keep reminding ourselves that seeing Native American characters in a film is not seeing real Native American people of the past or present.” Indians were either noble savages or villains, as far as filmmakers were concerned. The film Black Robe did a much better job of depicting 17th cc Algonquian‐speaking Indians that any of those films you mentioned.

A notable attempt at veracity was the 1971 NET television docudrama The Trail of Tears, which featured singing legend and one‐eighth‐Cherokee Johnny Cash. Cash stayed at Eastover Resort in Lenox during filming there and at Brodie Mountain in New Ashford.The movie depicted the arduous journey of Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma in 1838 — so gold prospecting could take place. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 as affected Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations.

Simultaneous with the filming, seniors at Taconic High School in Pittsfield were assembling the school’s first‐ever yearbook, called Manitou 1970. Adopting the great spirit suggested by the book’s name, a small group of students visited Cash at Eastover to describe their project. One of the students, Donna M. Drew of Great Barrington, remembers how impressive and gracious Cash was. “He was very tall, and had huge hands. He was so comfortable to converse with. We spoke for maybe 20 minutes.” The students included a full‐page photo of Cash in the yearbook.

•   Conroy, Ralph, “Johnny Cash Rated ‘One of the Boys,’ ‘Straight Guy’ on the Slopes at Brodie. Berkshire Eagle, 19 December 1969.

•   Drew, Donna M., personal reminiscence, 13 November 2016.

•   Ebert, Roger, “Last of the Mohicans” movie review, RogerEbert.com, 25 September 1992.

•   Hilger, Michael. Native Americans in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

•   Manitou 1970, Taconic High School Yearbook, Vol. 1. Pittsfield: Class of 1970.