Queen of the serials Pearl White plays an Indian Chief's daughter who marries the white trapper she rescues from death only for him to run out on her on their wedding night and return to his other wife. The plot is nothing special, and some of the acting is too broad, but the coloured version looks impressive.
3 Reviews
The Brains of a Dope
boblipton1 November 2008
A married trapper wins the heart of an Indian maid and is married to her. After the wedding night he returns to his other wife and family. The Indian discovers this bigamy and determines to kill him, but seeing the love he has for his daughter, she jumps off a cliff instead, hoping to meet again in the "Happy Hunting Ground."
That silly plot sums up the basic problem of this movie, which survives in an excellent tinted print. The exteriors, shot in Fort Lee New Jersey, are fine. The interiors are clearly flats. Besides the problems with the plot, the acting, while clearly Griffith-influenced -- by this stage, what American film was not? -- is broad to just shy of comedy; and the direction has a fairly long sequence in which the trapper comes home and cuddles his his daughter and neither of them mention the Indian in the room, even though the daughter fully knows she is there.
That silly plot sums up the basic problem of this movie, which survives in an excellent tinted print. The exteriors, shot in Fort Lee New Jersey, are fine. The interiors are clearly flats. Besides the problems with the plot, the acting, while clearly Griffith-influenced -- by this stage, what American film was not? -- is broad to just shy of comedy; and the direction has a fairly long sequence in which the trapper comes home and cuddles his his daughter and neither of them mention the Indian in the room, even though the daughter fully knows she is there.
The conflict between jealousy and hatred and love
deickemeyer1 February 2016
Here is told the story of a trapper adopted into an Indian tribe by the ceremony of the intermingling of blood, and is given the chief's daughter, Winonah, for a wife. Later he escapes and goes back to his own wife and child. Winonah follows to get revenge, but is befriended by the wife of the man she sought to kill, and when she sees him playing with his daughter, love triumphs and she leaves them in peace. The feature of the picture is the conflict between jealousy and hatred and love in the Indian woman's mind. The ceremony of adoption is accurately reproduced and gives an interesting glimpse of Indian customs. - The Moving Picture World, June 10, 1911
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