[quote name='Puppet Mistress' timestamp='1301356543' post='706036']By the way, watched episode 21 today... I got a bit of a Pocahontas feel from it, I don't know why. But the way the chief and Applejack's cousin fought with each other just reminded me of the "Savages" and theeeeee... Spanish? Or were they English? They didn't really sound either or look either. -shrugs-[/color][/font]
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[font="Comic Sans MS"]British colonials. [b]Pocahontas[/b] is a notoriously historically inaccurate movie, so I'm not surprised you couldn't quite place the accents. I'm pretty sure one guy was inexplicably Scottish.
But yeah, Native American property rights are a pretty common theme in the US. Tends to still be a touchy subject to this day, so a lot of fiction picks up on that and draws parallels. James Cameron's [b]Avatar[/b] is a notable recent example. I liked this version of the conflict more for a couple of reasons, though.
1: The Settler Ponies clearly had just as much use for the land as the Buffalo did. In most versions, the settlers just take the land for some mineral resource that doesn't perform any practical function except look shiny, which pretty much makes them unsympathetic by default. The Settler Ponies needed the land for their apple orchard, which is their primary food source. This way, they have just as much need of the land as the Buffalo, who were there first and have more right to it by default.
2: The resolution seen in this episode is about the only way you can end this particular commonly used plot without accidentally implying that the Settlers all went home, brought back several thousand soldiers and massacred the Indians into submission through superior firepower (the way it historically happened). With this compromise, everyone is allowed to co-habitate the prairie and there's no further need for conflict.[/font]