The Scalphunters (1968)

Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) has just spent the winter collecting pelts when he is surrounded by Kiowa warriors.  Two Crows, the leader, wants the pelts and is willing to trade a black man for them.  Joe has no interest in an escaped slave but the deal is forced on him.  Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis) was a house slave in Louisianna and happens to be surprisingly well-educated.  Though Joseph explains how he was recently captured from the Comanche and would like to be returned to the Comanche, Joe Bass decides he would be worth more if sold back into slavery.  Futhermore, Joe explains how there is a jug of whiskey hidden inside the pelts and he expects the Kiowa will be dead drunk this evening.  It will be the perfect time to sneak into camp and abscond with his pelts.  They have hardly arrived to surveil the Kiowa campsite when scalp hunters led by Jim Howie (Telly Savalas) slaughter them.  The scalphunters ride off with the pelts!  While Joseph thinks that's the end of that, Joe is still determined to get his pelts.

The scalphunters have several wagons, several women, and about a dozen men.  Jed (Dabney Coleman) is Jim's righthand while Kate (Shelly Winters) is the woman he tries to please.  Kate is not easily pleased.  She makes demands of Jim that he usually obeys.  Maybe she's Jim's righthand?

Mostly, this is Joseph Lee's story.  He starts off as property of the Kiowa, finds himself traded to Joe Bass, and later falls into the hands of Jim Howie and his band of scalphunters.  Though everyone wants to sell him as a slave (he's worth $1000 to $1500!), he is determined to get to Mexico where slavery is illegal.  He has a real talent for manipulating people.

Strange to say, this movie about men who scalp Indians was often comedic.  The interactions between Joe Bass and Joseph Lee are funny and sometimes slapstick.  Then, in the next scene, someone is run through with a spear.  That switch is often jarring.  The comedy is a little too heavy at parts.  Joe Bass, who is cunning through much of the movie, suddenly turns doltish as the plot requires.

The time period of the movie is inscrutable.  Most of the guns are post-Civil War weapons.  However, it is clearly during or before the Civil War since slavery is still legal.  The heyday of the mountain man hunting pelts was from 1820 to 1840.  Yes, many continued for years after but the fur market had crashed with a change in fashion.  The most infamous of the scalp hunters were John Joel Glanton (1819 - 1850) and James Kirker (1793-1852).  Each had crews of men with whom they slaughtered Indians or anyone whose scalp might pass as Indian.  They would collect the bounty from Mexico, who could not post enough soldiers to protect the northern frontier from Indian depredations.

Ahistorical in its setting, it is still good popcorn fun.