According to one historian, Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves botches some historical Civil War details. Starring Costner, who also directed the Western epic, Dances with Wolves follows Civil War Lieutenant John Dunbar (Costner), who is stationed at a remote post in Sioux territory, which makes him question his own purpose in life. The Western epic received massive critical acclaim at the time of its release, including Academy Award wins for Best Picture and Best Director for Costner. Despite its acclaim, Dances with Wolves seemingly has factual inaccuracies of the time.
Speaking with Insider, historian Garry Adelman picks apart the movie’s opening sequences, including an open-field battle, a sniper shooting, and a medical scene. Adelman had a bone to pick with several aspects of the war strategy in these Dances with Wolves scenes, including the movie’s portrayal of amputation in a far more dangerous light than it was in the actual Civil War, wherein amputation was a routine procedure that surgeons of the time were competent at completing safely. Additionally, he pointed to the slight inaccuracy of the weaponry usage in Costner’s Western movie and the lack of proper barriers in an “open field.” Check out the full dissection from Adelman below:
“If I’m in an open field I would be tickled pink to have half my body covered by some slats in a fence. I would prefer a big boulder, don’t get me wrong, but I’m going to be happy for anything I can use that gives me more chance to live and gives my troops a better chance to repel the enemy.
Once you’ve got the range of your weapon, they can be extraordinarily accurate, but hitting a moving target laterally is probably not easy for anybody except the best shooters. Certainly it is possible, but unlikely, you know that he could make it through such a hail storm of bullets, yeah it seems pretty unlikely to me. They could have hit him while he was resting; he was definitely within easy musket range at that point but the Civil War produces hundreds of ex amples of that man is too brave, don’t shoot him, so there was a gentlemanliness and an honor.
AdvertisementOne of the greatest myths of the Civil war is that Civil War surgeons are sort of sawing through people’s bones without any sort of painkiller and no preparation while they scream through their surgeries, only biting on a bullet or a stick or something. And that’s just not true. Most of those amputations were conducted with the use of morphine or ether, a substantial painkiller that would allow surgeons to carefully prepare for the amputation by cutting away the muscle, leaving a skin flap, and then sawing through the bone with a saw so sharp that it wouldn’t take that long. Amputation was the most common surgery employed during the Civil War for good reason. Surgeons of the time could not deal with the complexities of internal injuries on the torso, but you could turn a wound to your extremities into something they could treat by amputating it at least.
The dreaded infection gangrene, for which the Civil War would start to produce a cure, actually medical advancements were made very often with great frequency during the Civil War, but certainly Civil War surgeons understood the idea of infection, but they didn’t have an understanding of microbiology yet.
I’m going to give this clip a 6/10.”
Dances With Wolves’ Legacy Is Even More Complicated Than Its War Inaccuracies
Adelman’s average rating for Dances with Wolves seems generous, given how closely he picked apart the Western movie. The amputation especially seems entirely inaccurate as well as the attempt to paint the soldiers in worse conditions than they were, given the commonplace nature of the issue. Dances with Wolves may have been subject to critical acclaim, but that was clearly due in no part to its adherence to historical accuracy. Still, the botched Civil War accuracy is the least of the flawed concerns in Dances with Wolves.
The main criticism comes down to the central story, which focuses on the soldier’s encounter with the Native American tribe. While the movie gave opportunity for many Native American performers, including now star Graham Greene, Dances with Wolves has been criticized over the years for its representation of indigenous people and their interactions with White Americans during the period. While Native American characters are dimensional which resisted flat interpretations present in earlier works, the story is implausible in its portrayal of John Dunbar’s kindness towards Native Americans, who in reality were continuously repressed by White people more often than they were respected by them.
Dances with Wolves, unfortunately, misses the mark when confronting the violence against Native Americans. As with the Civil War history displayed in the movie, Dances with Wolves attempts a well-rounded period piece while often falling short. Hence, Adelman’s barely 6 out of 10 rating could also apply more broadly to the movie’s treatment of representation, culture, and history as a whole.