While out trapping, Daniel and Israel find an ailing elderly Indian, Tamenund (David Opatashu). They take him back to Boonesborough and nurse him back to temporary health, but he then shows a vengeful streak.
The around-the-fort string of hours continued with this, the penultimate episode with a Native American component. Opatashu (always remembered by "Star Trek: TOS" fans as Anan 7, leader of the planet that self-immolated its casualties in a digitally-fought war) does his best to close out the era of non-Native Americans playing Native Americans.
The plot is kept fairly minimal, likely to avoid production costs in the series rundown. Tamenund is the last of a tribe that used to live around Boonesborough, and wants some vengeance before he clocks out. He pointedly notes "there was a town here once before," which a more innovative production might have used for some interesting flashback sequences. But, More default to Boonesborough antics and danger to Israel. Some additional use is made of the late-series Boone barn set.
By this late point in 1970 you would think the national landscape upheaval would have convinced NBC and Fespar to take on some real Native American consultants to tell more authentic Native American stories, but - no. Tamenund is declared a Pequot, a Massachusetts tribe decimated by Puritan warfare in the 17th century and having no ties to Kentucky. Opatashu looks more like a sad elderly person trying to make friends at Woodstock, and NBC again raids the prop warehouse to produce a ridiculous mishmash of tribal accouterments, including yes, the skulls on poles.
An equivalent of the dying Westerner trope seen in John Wayne's penultimate "The Shootist" might have been accomplished, but the hour shifts hard from a multicultural elegy to a realistically brutal frontier ethos when Dan sets out to rescue Israel, and brushes aside Rebecca' protestations of Tamenund's ancestral ties by noting "this used to be wolf land, but we don't let them come back." The hour starts so-so, but finishes strong.
The around-the-fort string of hours continued with this, the penultimate episode with a Native American component. Opatashu (always remembered by "Star Trek: TOS" fans as Anan 7, leader of the planet that self-immolated its casualties in a digitally-fought war) does his best to close out the era of non-Native Americans playing Native Americans.
The plot is kept fairly minimal, likely to avoid production costs in the series rundown. Tamenund is the last of a tribe that used to live around Boonesborough, and wants some vengeance before he clocks out. He pointedly notes "there was a town here once before," which a more innovative production might have used for some interesting flashback sequences. But, More default to Boonesborough antics and danger to Israel. Some additional use is made of the late-series Boone barn set.
By this late point in 1970 you would think the national landscape upheaval would have convinced NBC and Fespar to take on some real Native American consultants to tell more authentic Native American stories, but - no. Tamenund is declared a Pequot, a Massachusetts tribe decimated by Puritan warfare in the 17th century and having no ties to Kentucky. Opatashu looks more like a sad elderly person trying to make friends at Woodstock, and NBC again raids the prop warehouse to produce a ridiculous mishmash of tribal accouterments, including yes, the skulls on poles.
An equivalent of the dying Westerner trope seen in John Wayne's penultimate "The Shootist" might have been accomplished, but the hour shifts hard from a multicultural elegy to a realistically brutal frontier ethos when Dan sets out to rescue Israel, and brushes aside Rebecca' protestations of Tamenund's ancestral ties by noting "this used to be wolf land, but we don't let them come back." The hour starts so-so, but finishes strong.
