I just watched a 1955 production of "The Far Horizons," a hokey depiction of the Lewis and Clark Expedition starring Fred MacMurray as Lewis and Charlton Heston as William Clark. Donna Reed played Sacajewa.
I remembered this movie from 1955 when I saw it with my parents. All I remember from that viewing was there was conflict between Lewis and Clark over Sacajawea.
The producers apparently felt the need to inject Hollywood fiction into this story of one of the most important events in American History.
They had Julia Hancock being the intended of Lewis, who resented that Clark stole her affections away from him after he introduced them. This is preposterous because Julia Hancock, who became Clark's wife and bore him a bunch of children, was a cousin. Clark would have introduced Lewis to her, not the other way around.
There's a line where Clark names a fork of the Missouri Sacajawea and Lewis names the other fork Julia. Actually, it was Clark who named the Judith River after Julia, and there was no Sacajawea River.
The movie also depicted a number of battles between the Corps of Discovery and various Indian tribes. This too is preposterous because there were no battles. Lewis did kill a Blackfoot who with some others stole their horses when Lewis was on the segment of the return trip that took place after the Captains split up. Clark was on the Yellowstone at the time. The Indian Lewis killed was the only fatality of the expedition, except for Sergeant Floyd, who died of appendicitis. (The movie did portray that fact somewhat accurately.) No other members of the expedition died, but the movie shows several being killed by Indians.
The most ridiculous scene, I thought, was when the Indians prepared a big net like a version of submarine nets in Pearl Harbor and stretched it across the river the expedition was descending. The net was used to set up an ambush.
The movie had Charbonneau being sent back down river after some misbehavior and showed Sacajawea taking over as the guide. Charbonneau completed the entire trip. He was a miscreant, so that was probably the reason for the depiction.
Sacajawea was shown visiting the White House, which never happened.
All in all it was fun watching just to catch all the inaccuracies. The weather was perfect for the entire production, and there was no wintering depicted at all. In fact, the expedition began in 1804. They wintered with the Mandans and continued to the mouth of the Columbia in 1805, where they stayed until the spring of 1806.
The movie has Lewis recording charges against Clark for his refusal to send Sacajawea away. At the end, they cover up the actual facts by depicting Lewis's journal with five missing pages. |
