Review of Tonka

Originally, this was to have been called "Comanche," the title of the novel it is based on. Just before the Disney company was about to release their latest western, though, a B oater starring Dana Andrews with that name hit theatres. That one dealt with Comanche Indians. This one, with Comanche, a horse owned by a member of the seventh cavalry that survived the Little Big Horn and led to the tradition of the riderless horse still in existence today. Disney changed the name to Tonka, which is what a young Sioux boy, White Bull (Sal Mineo) calls the horse after catching it - short for Tonka Wakon, or the Great One. The change of titles actually works to the film's benefit, for Disney and company placed more emphasis on the Indian side of the story than the cavalry's, making this the first movie ever made to tell the story of Custer's Last Stand from the Indian point of view, at least up to Little Big Man (1970) - and in truth that was from the point of view of a what man raised by the Indians. Mineo, who would again play an Indian youth in a much bigger film, John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964), is believable, and the film is sympathetic to Native Americans, without being patronizing or condescending, in a way that we expect today, but which no Hollywood filmmaker but Disney did back in the fifties - he was P.C. before P.C. existed, and may just have created the climate of tolerance that we strive for today. Philip Carey plays the sympathetic cavalryman Miles Keogh, and it's worth noting that this was the first Disney western NOT to star Fess Parker, who had been their headliner since Davy Crockett four years earlier. Very accurate staging of the Little Big Horn battle, as this is one of the only films ever made to reveal that Custer (Britt Lomond, the villainous Monastario on Disney's ZORRO TV show) had his hair trimmed short just before the battle, and that he did not carry a sword to the battle - and neither did any of his men. Those who expect Disney films to be sanitized ought to catch this one, as the Last Stand is quite bloody considering the time period in which it was made, forcing child viewers to deal with the unromantic truth of warfare on the plains, circa 1876. A little gem worth rediscovering.