Dances With Wolves, by Michael Blake, creates a remarkable story of a soldier named Lieutenant Dunbar. This story is written in third person, and has diary entries of lieutenant Dunbar in them. The story tells off buffalo, Comanche enemies, Comanche leisure, society, homes, religion, and clothing. In the novel, Dunbar meets Comanche Indians, and learns their ways of life. The story takes place during the civil war era. Eighteen excerpts from the novel and nineteen citations have been used to determine the historical accurateness of Dances With Wolves.
Dunbar is a civil war hero who is sent to an abandoned fort named Sedgewick. Throughout the story buffalo plays an important role. In Dances With Wolves, author Michael Blake states, "They (comanches) also gnawed off pieces of the raw meat (the buffalo). They were eating it greedily, as if it were fresh apple pie."(p.160.) This information is verified in Bill Lund's book The Comanche Indians, "Buffalo was an important Comanche food.
Dances with Wolves
Dances with Wolves (soundtrack)
Author of Dances with wolvesThey ate buffalo meat all year long." (p.9.)
The buffalo was considered the most important animals to the Native Americans. In the novel, it states that, "They (buffalo) were life of the prairie. And there were thousands of them pouring over the embankment and down to the river." (p.143.) This is acknowledged in Russell Freedman's book Buffalo Hunt. "To Plains Indians, the buffalo, or American bison, was the most important animal on the earth." (p.8.)
Buffalo hides were used for many different objects such as clothes and homes. As stated in the novel, "A load of stacked buffalo hides was peeking over the rails." (p.153.) History agrees with this statement because in Raymond Bial's book The Comanche, "Women scraped the flesh from buffalo hides then stretched them out to dry in the sun. The raw...