Part 2: Characters for The End of Eden

The story of Chief White Pigeon (Wahbememe) provides an interesting and useful insight into the Potawatomi people and their leadership up to 1830. Wahbememe and many of the other Potawatomi chiefs were middle-aged men who had been involved in Tecumseh’s Rebellion in 1811 and The War of 1812. These chiefs were neither young nor naive. The advance of white settlers was something that the Potawatomi chiefs knew was unstoppable. Experience in war and travel throughout the Midwest and Canada had created a group of middle-aged chiefs who had seen how white settlers absorbed and divided up land for farming. They had seen other tribes driven west from states to the east. They knew very well how their land would be swallowed up and were trying to prepare the best way possible.

Since Wahbememe was a signer of The Treaty of Greenville in 1795, it can be assumed that he was middle-aged man and most likely in his 50’s at the time of his death around 1830. He also was involved with Tecumseh in Tecumseh’s Rebellion around 1811 and fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812. Military records from the War of 1812 also indicate that Wahbememe was an important Potawatomi chief and leader. He was also a recognized leader of a village, because his unoccupied village was destroyed by American soldiers.

When I researched other Potawatomi chiefs living in villages in southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana, many of these leaders of the Potawatomi people at the time of Wahbememe’s sacrifice were also middle-aged men who had experienced war and fighting in the War of 1812 and Tecumseh’s Rebellion. I chose to focus on several chiefs because of their relevance to the story that I wanted to tell. Those chiefs were Metea, Leopold Pokagon, Menominee and Shipshewana. From the many Potawatomi leaders in the area, those characters were chosen to tell the story in The End of Eden for a variety of reasons.

Chief Metea as a character is particularly intriguing. His intellect, education and experience was so complete that he could speak flawless English and was a skilled orator. From my research, his intellect, leadership skills and oratory skills made for the perfect motivation to have Metea murdered. Metea died following “accidentally” drinking poison that he supposedly mistook for whiskey. If you have read Metea’s eloquent speeches, it quickly becomes apparent that he was a true leader of the Potawatomi who would be difficult to control and especially remove. If anyone out there truly believes that Metea mistook poison for whiskey, I have a sweet bridge for sale up at Mackinaw City. I used my belief that Metea was murdered in the screenplay.

Chief White Pigeon and the other Potawatomi leaders were making the best deals and terms in treaties to stay within their reservations and assimilate with white settlers in the treaties made before 1830. The land that would become the city of White Pigeon was ceded to the government by Wahbememe and other chiefs in the Treaty of 1826 in order to build a government road from Detroit to Chicago. They knew that this road would bring white settlers to the area, and it definitely did just that.

One of the first white settlers to the White Pigeon prairie was Leonard Cutler and his family. Leonard had fought in The War of 1812 and wished to return to the White Pigeon prairie to live. On the family’s trip, Leonard became deathly ill and was saved by the Potawatomi when he arrived. It’s a telling statement on the goodwill of the Potawatomi people that they saved the life of one of the first white settlers to their former lands despite him being a former soldier. This bit of actual history serves as the beginning of the story. In my screenplay, Leonard is not only seeking a new home but is distancing himself from the lure of whiskey because of severe alcoholism. He is saved by Wahbememe himself, Leonard offers to teach Wahbememe and the Potawatomi to use the white man’s agriculture.

I know some may feel this is an insult to a thousand years or more of successful agriculture by the Potawatomi people. That might be true if Leonard hadn’t brought a new and state of the art farm implement for the late 1820’s: the cast iron plow. The iron plow was a huge advancement in agriculture. It allowed for a much more rapid advancement of settlers into the west. A farmer using a cast iron plow in the 1820’s was using state of the art machinery. Soils could be plowed and planted that could never have been tilled before. This is yet another reason that the Potawatomi people faced a sudden influx of settlers in the 1830’s and 1840’s. Wahbememe and the other leaders of the Potawatomi would have definitely been intrigued by the cast iron plow and interested in using every advantage possible to live upon their new reservations.

There is a protagonist priest character, Father Stephen Baden. Father Baden ran the Catholic mission at Niles and sought converts to Catholicism throughout the Potawatomi nation. Chief Leopold Pokagon and Chief Menominee were both converts to Catholicism. Leopold Pokagon and the Potawatomi at Niles used the Catholic mission to successfully sue the government to avoid removal west in the 1830’s. Chief Menominee converted to Catholicism and abided by every treaty he signed as a leader to resist removal. Despite Menominee’s conversion to Catholicism and desire to live on his reservation, federal Indian Agents obtained fraudulently signed treaties that ceded his reservation. Menominee was loaded upon a prison wagon at gunpoint for his trip on The Trail of Death west of the Mississippi River.

I’ve thought about changing the priest character to Father Benjamin M. Petit. Although it wouldn’t be as historically accurate, Father Petit sacrificed his health and his life by accompanying the Potawatomi on the “Trail of Death”. If there is a rewrite, he will most likely take the place of Father Baden as the priest character.

Coming up with the antagonist or “bad guys” didn’t take much historical research. The main antagonist is John Shields Tipton. At a young age, John Tipton’s father and uncle (mother’s brother) were killed by the Cherokee in Tennessee. His second wife’s father, Captain Spier Spencer, was killed fighting Indians in The Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 where Tipton was also a soldier. In addition, even Tipton’s ancestors proclaim that he “was a born Indian hater” and that he “pursued Indian war parties in his early days and lamented in his writings when they escaped”. In his role as a federal Indian Agent, his ancestors state that Tipton “may have at times taken monetary advantage of his position as commissioner of Indian affairs through land dealings and the appointment of friends and relatives to lucrative jobs, he was neither better nor worse than those who served at the time”.

Since Tipton’s father, uncle and father-in-law were all killed fighting Indians and possibly some of them being Potawatomi, any rational person would conclude that a person such as Tipton could not possibly deal impartially as an Indian Agent and that Tipton would be automatically disqualified from such a government position. After securing the job of federal Indian Agent, Tipton served an important role in government efforts to remove the Potawatomi people. He also participated in escorting about 900 Potawatomi people at gunpoint from Indiana to the Mississippi River in 1838 on the “Trail of Death”. His ancestors don’t seem to mention that fact anywhere that I can locate. John Tipton became an easy choice for the number one bad guy of the bunch.

You may wonder how the government could have a character with such contradictory motivations as John Tipton had with the Potawatomi people. Michigan territorial Governor Lewis Cass displayed identical contradictory motives with the Potawatomi people. While Cass negotiated treaties with the Potawatomi that seemed to allow the Potawatomi to live upon their reservations, he also believed firmly in removal of all Indians to lands across the Mississippi River while leading the Potawatomi people to believe otherwise. Lewis Cass was central to implementing the removal policies of president Andrew Jackson. Cass also ran unsuccessfully for president and was pro-slavery utilizing the “Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty”.

Another bad guy/antagonist is Abel C. Pepper. Pepper serves the role in the screenplay as Tipton’s willing lieutenant. In history, Pepper became an Indian Agent too. He followed orders and did everything possible to obtain signed treaties, including bribes, fraud and through the use of whiskey. Pepper also participated in rounding up the Potawatomi people at gunpoint on more than one occasion and lead the Potawatomi people at gunpoint on The Trail of Death. Including him as another antagonist/bad guy was certainly a pleasure.

There are also Potawatomi characters who work in my screenplay as bad guys/antagonists. Pierre Moreau was a French man who married a Potawatomi woman and became a “chief” at the Nottawaseppi reservation. His son, Sauauquette serves as another antagonist. Sauauquette was involved in trading away the Nottawaseppi reservation and is claimed to have boasted of the great sale he had made of the reservation-land owned by the Great Spirit, and that for two quarts of whiskey he would sell the same again should opportunity occur. I could find no known livings relatives of Pierre Moreau or Sauauquette within the Potawatomi people. Sauauquette was murdered before removal west for trading away Potawatomi lands. His grave is on the St. Joseph River in Mendon at a location that I hope to visit one day.

There are also other minor characters based on actual historical characters. Almost all the characters used to tell the story are based on actual characters and events in history. The lives of actual characters and events served to tell the story in The End of Eden. Men who had fought in war less than 20 years earlier come together in the late 1820’s in Michigan. Potawatomi chiefs and people faced an influx of settlers who would rapidly change their landscapes and lives. The history of these characters provided more than enough material for a movie and more than a story about why Wahbememe heroically sacrificed his life for his friends.

Screenplay available as a pdf file at: http://www.mediafire.com/?rnmjimon25h

More to come...

The Potawatomi people and The End of Eden

About a year ago, I finished a screenplay called THE END OF EDEN based on a Potawatomi chief named Wahbememe or “White Pigeon”. A monument to Chief White Pigeon is located just outside of the Michigan city that bears his name and tells part of what is his story. “In memory of Wahbememe, Chief White Pigeon who about 1830 gave his life to save the settlement at this place”. Then along the base of the monument, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”. Chief White Pigeon gave his life by running 150 miles from Detroit to a small settlement that most likely was called Millville to warn the settlers there and then passed away from exhaustion.

Screenplay available as a pdf file at: http://www.mediafire.com/?rnmjimon25h


Chief White Pigeon’s grave sits near the intersection of two former Indian trails that would become US-131 and US-12. I still remember the day that my mother let us skip a day from elementary school for a trip to visit relatives. On that day, we stopped on our trip to visit Chief White Pigeon’s grave. Being about 6 or 7 years old, I distinctly remember staring at the granite monument on that warm spring day and questioning what had motivated this man to run so far that he died. It made enough of an impression on me that I could have told you the basic story of Chief White Pigeon at any time after that day. I’ve passed through that intersection several hundred times and stopped at Chief White Pigeon’s grave at least a dozen times since that motherly inspired day of truancy almost 40 years ago.

More from accident than intention, I became an aspiring screenwriter several years ago. If you want the story of how or why that happened, it’s covered partially in my blog. I can fill you in on the details for anyone wanting to know more. The idea for using Chief White Pigeon's heroic action and his death as the subject matter for a screenplay also came mostly by accident. While searching for some genealogical information on the internet, Wahbememe’s monument kept coming up in searches. Wahbememe popped up often enough to finally get my attention. There it was, a great concept for a movie.

It was in the wee hours of the morning, when I should have been working on a still half-finished screenplay, that my journey into writing The End of Eden began. Thankfully, I have had the opportunity to research and learn about Wahbememe, Potawatomi history, Michigan history and the history of the first settlers to southwestern Michigan. Yet nothing that I learned provided the answer to the question I’d asked myself 40 years earlier. I exhausted every historical resource and will most likely never find the answer to the motivation for Wahbememe's heroic trek. What I did find was something much better, the history of the Potawatomi people.

If you read or even skim my screenplay, it’s very important to realize that the basis for the basic story must center on settlers and the local Potawatomi people near what is now called White Pigeon, Michigan. Even without a complete answer to why Wahbememe heroically sacrificed his life 180 years ago, I knew there was more than enough for a screenplay after only a couple hours of research into the Potawatomi people, government officials and Michigan settlers. The best possible motivation for a screenwriter occurred during those first few hours of research. I became angry, offended and really pissed off. One of the most crushing lessons that I’ve had to learn from my life is this: that people in positions of power are far too often corrupt, criminal, unethical, venal, self-serving and duplicitous. And here I was again finding the same bad guys jumping off the pages of history books. Every great movie needs those bad guys(antagonists) and the good guys (protagonists), and it didn’t take long to find amazing examples of both.

More to come tomorrow...

My next post will be prior to April 1

Last year I wrote a screenplay for film based on the life of a Potawatomi historical chief named Wahbememe or White Pigeon. Before April 1st, I'm planning to write something about what I learned in my research to write the screenplay.

Here is a link to the screenplay through Mediafire. It should allow you to download the screenplay as a pdf file.

http://www.mediafire.com/?rnmjimon25h

Or you can copy and paste this to bring it up:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/rnmjimon25h/J:\THE END OF EDEN V 1TS.pdf

If my blog seems somewhat inactive, that is the reason.

Health insurance provided by corporations is unconstitutional

Health insurance provided by corporations is unconstitutional Based on the recent Supreme Court decision, corporations act as individuals with a distinct identity. Labor executed by a worker is compensated only by payment for that labor from this individual/corporation. These individuals/corporations also have a government sponsored (through tax cuts & subsidies) incentive to provide health insurance to employees.

Because health insurance is not a contractual part of any compensation, the individuals/corporations attain a slaveholder and slave relationship with the employee. This slaveholder and slave relationship also extends to the family members of the employee. This extension to the family of the employee creates a further slavery relationship that creates an undo, illegal and unconstitutional burden on the worker to the individuals/corporations.

Employer provided healthcare by individuals/corporations is a clear violation of the 13th amendment against slavery, because it creates a slaveowner relationship between the individual/corporation employer (slaveowner) and the employee (slave) that also creates a further slave/slaveholder relationship with the employee's family that is also a violation of the 13th Amendment.

The federal government is set to further enhance and expand the slaveholder and slave relationship that exists. When there is no legal or contractual reason for an employee to be provided health insurance by the individual/corporation, the government has created and enhanced the current slave/slaveholder relationship that exists within American corporate and business culture. This extension of the slaveholder and slave relationship by activities of the federal government violates the 13th Amendment to the constitution.

Of course, the slaveholder as the individual/corporation maintains an advantage in an employment relationship that extends beyond rational and ordinary compensation received by the employee and makes the employee a slave. Given the recent Supreme Court decision recognizing the individual identity of corporations as individuals with 1st Amendment rights to influence politics, those individuals clearly cannot be given the rights of a slaveholder as clearly abolished in the 13th Amendment of the Constitution.

I understand that my Constitutional argument is simplistic and dogmatic. I just plain and simply disagree with how, why or where a person chooses to work should affect his/her health or that of his/her family. The Constitution clearly states that is the role of government to "promote the general welfare". The USA should have government provided health care for all citizens.

When a mystery becomes annoying?

If you come here as a screenwriter, there's one thing I'd like to tell you. When you create a mystery in one of your screenplays, make sure that the reader/viewer WANTS TO KNOW the answer to the mystery. I'm not joking in the least bit. It sounds so damned simple, but it isn't at all.

There is a line that you can cross in creating a mystery. And I'm not talking about a mystery genre, but a mystery that can lie within any genre. That line is when you cross into having the reader/viewer NEED TO KNOW. That's right, I don't want to need to know a damned thing. Nothing. If I need to know instead of wanting to know, you've lost me and my genuine interest in a whole lot of what happens.

The inevitable tends to happen when I need to know something in a screenplay or a movie. I really don't give a shit if I know, but you're going to tell me. That's right, tell me. There won't be enough set-up to really care about the mystery or it's way too obvious. Then out comes the stunningly obvious or amazingly boring revelation.

Listing examples of each isn't why I'm writing this. I'm writing this so you don't write something with a revelation to a mystery that will ruin even the remote chance your screenplay has of success. And don't make the excuse that you're writing some direct to DVD thing that doesn't need to be written well. The secret to any successful mystery is making me want to know something rather than needing to know.

If you're a fan of bad movies that routinely have storylines with mysteries that no one cares or wants the answer to, then your chances of success are greatly diminished. Seriously, don't watch shitty movies for inspiration. If your favorite mystery is crushed by the critics, there is a reason. That reason is more than likely that the story didn't actually contain a mystery. It had fallen into needing to know, and that ain't a mystery.

This all brings me to Memento, and the reason that I kind of liked it and have no desire to see it again. Part way through the movie, I lost the desire to want the answers to the mystery. I realized that the bassackwards nature of the movie created the only want to know that there was. If it was told chronologically, I wouldn't give a shit, want to know or have enough desire to know much. Yes, it achieved what it set out to do. ONCE and only once.

Don't write a backasswards steaming turd like Memento. I don't want to see it or read your bassackwards screenplay. And don't rewrite anything else that you admire. The writers of Memento figured out how to make the viewer want to know something because of the bassackwards nature of the film/screenplay. You have to figure out how to make me the reader/viewer want to know in your own way.

Please, do that. Make me want to know the answer to a mystery. Set it up, do it well. I'll thank you and admire you for doing so.