Ark of the First Man TITLE: "ARK OF THE FIRST MAN" Story and Screenplay by Cathy Smith & Jerry Fahrenthold Based on the book "Travels in the Interior of North America in the Years 1832 to 1834" by Alexander Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied. GENRE: Alternative Western/Native American Epic LOGLINES: A Swiss artist and a Mandan warrior learn tradition and spirituality. A vision quest to save an Indian tribe's universe. "Dances With Wolves" meets "Raiders of the Lost Ark", book ended by "Smoke Signals." Before "Dances With Wolves" there was Mih-tutta-Hang-Kusch: the Paris of the Prairies. THEME: Tradition conflicts with the search for knowledge. On the heels of Lewis & Clark, a Swiss artist learns hope, spirituality, and American freedom as he travels up the Missouri River with a young Mandan warrior who questions his own traditions and searches for truth, while on a spiritual quest to save his tribe from extinction. It's about fate and destiny. Steamboats bring the magic and misery of the outside world up the Missouri, changing the lives of Native Americans. Smallpox is the ultimate gift, resulting in the decimation of entire tribes. We are reminded that smallpox continues to be one of humanity's greatest threats in today's terrorist arsenal. The Hero's Journey set in a time of great change and cultural disintegration. The collision of cultures. The struggle to preserve history and tradition. UNIVERSALITY: Teens of all generations question their elders and cultural traditions. Our story occurs on the Western Frontier at the time of first white contact, bringing great changes to the indigenous cultures. It is about how these changes effect contemporary Native American culture and the struggle to save tradition today . THE STORY: A tale of Mandan, Assiniboin and Blackfeet Indians, fur traders, artists, a prince, steamboats, beaver, buffalo, battles, horse raids, and life on the Upper Missouri two hundred years ago--a jackpot of a gathering; as seen through the eyes of both: 1) A struggling Swiss artist --a faithless, cynical, adulterous drinker and 2) A teenage Mandan warrior on a hero's journey, caught between tradition, love and the thirst for knowledge in a time of transition and imminent demise for his culture. Our story begins in contemporary times on the Mandan/Hidatsa Reservation, Mandaree, ND. A reluctant and rebellious teenage Mandan, IVAN GOES AHEAD, accompanies his elders on a mission to repatriate a sacred tribal bundle from the Museum of the American Indian. During the sacred ceremony, while receiving the Waterbuster Bundle in the Museum, Ivan's attention is drawn to an antique Mandan dagger. Amidst the smoke of burning sage and the singing of the medicine man, the scene flashes back through Ivan's eyes, and the knife is in the hand of his great, great grandfather - in 1833. GOES AHEAD [played by the same actor as Ivan], a young Mandan warrior, steals horses from the Assiniboin in a daring night raid along with three other warriors. He kills one enemy and scalps another alive, taking his medicine charm as a trophy. He questions the validity of all traditional beliefs as he ponders the charm that did not protect its owner, SCALPED MAN. The warriors paint their faces and legs in victory. In St. Louis, Karl BODMER, a Swiss artist views George Catlin's paintings of the Mandan performing a scalp dance. Present with Bodmer are Prince MAXIMILIAN, a German naturalist who hired Bodmer, General William CLARK, who led the famed Corps of Discovery expedition in 1804 and his nephew, Major Benjamin O'FALLON. Bodmer, in European fashion and in contrast to the Americans, noticeably defers to the prince as nobility, not just an employer. They discuss the Upper Missouri tribes, while Clark gives his impressions and O'Fallon copies maps as Maximilian and Bodmer prepare for a scientific expedition upriver. Goes Ahead, with his face painted black in victory and leading many horses, returns to his earth lodge village of Mih-tutta-hang-kusch along the Missouri River, and is honored as a hero. We see the village in all the glory and splendor of pre-white contact times; the "Paris of the Prairies." Goes Ahead courts the woman he loves, MINT, amidst the scalp dance of the Dog Soldiers. The center of the village holds the sacred Ark of the First Man, the power center of the people around which all life takes place. [The Ark is symbolic of the great flood in Mandan mythology, wherein First Man brought the people to safety.] The Assiniboin, lead by Scalped Man retaliate with a raid on Mih-tutta-hang-kusch. They sneak into the lodge of the medicine man (Mint's father), BROKEN BONE, and steal the sacred Waterbuster Bundle. The Bundle, brought to the people by two eagles, is crucial to the survival of the Mandan, insuring bountiful crops, plentiful buffalo, and defense from enemies. The chief, FOUR BEARS, decides to make a replacement Bundle until the original can be recovered, hoping to avoid devastating the morale of the tribe. During the O-Kee-pa Ceremony (the Mandan Sundance), Goes Ahead undergoes the torture ritual and is given a vision in which he sees events of the future and is warned of danger to the tribe, including further defilement of the Waterbuster Bundle. Broken Bone and Four Bears interpret his vision, deciding that Goes Ahead has been chosen by the Spirits to recover the sacred Bundle. Part of his vision is manifested with the astonishing arrival of white men on a "thunder boat," a steamboat of the American Fur Company. Goes Ahead is fascinated by Bodmer and Maximilian. An artist in his own right, Goes Ahead is a painter of traditional pictographs, and is captivated by Bodmer's lifelike portraits. Through this friendship, he learns of the outside world, and decides that these whites are his passport to travel upriver in search of the Bundle. He meets the scorn and derision of his tribe for associating with white men, the grief of his betrothed for leaving home and family, and is caught between tradition and the search for knowledge. The trip up the Missouri is fraught with obstacles and danger, through which a strong bond is created between Bodmer and Goes Ahead. They exchange information about their cultures and begin to realize that the ideal world of the Native American is destined to change forever. Stopping at Fort Union, the last civilized fur post on the river, Bodmer and Goes Ahead are overwhelmed by decadence, alcohol and the general decline of traditional values, which only gets worse as they travel farther upriver. Even the children are drunk at these outposts, another gift of the white man. Bodmer and Goes Ahead's friendship deepens. Bodmer falls in love with MRS. MCKENZIE, the Indian wife of Kenneth MCKENZIE, the Lord of the Fur Trade. Caught in an adulterous affair, Bodmer receives the wrath of McKenzie. Tension increases between Bodmer, the struggling artist, and Maximilian, his noble patron. They must leave. Continuing on to Fort McKenzie, the last fur post deep in Blackfeet country, Goes Ahead hears rumors of the Bundle. During their stay at the fort, the Assiniboin attack the Blackfeet who are trading there. With assistance from the Eagle Spirits of the Bundle and the help of Bodmer, Goes Ahead leads a counterattack and turns the tide of the battle. After a desperate running fight, Goes Ahead and Bodmer recover the Bundle from Scalped Man's war camp (aided by the Spirits of the Bundle,) but become separated from Maximilian and the others and are presumed dead. Goes Ahead insists on returning to his village overland and away from the influence and decadence of the whites. The Bundle requires this treatment. Witnessing the spititual event gives Bodmer a new faith in life, but he finds himself alone with Goes Ahead in hostile territory. Believing Bodmer dead, with winter coming and increasing danger of tribal warfare, Maximilian flees the violent camp at Fort McKenzie and returns to Fort Clark and Mih-tutta-hang-kusch down the Missouri. Bodmer and Goes Ahead also undergo the dangerous overland journey hundreds of miles back to Mih-tutta-hang-kusch. Goes Ahead convinces Bodmer that they must avoid Fort Union, the Assiniboin near there and Mrs. McKenzie. Meanwhile, Maximilian arrives at Mih-tutta-hang-kusch to find whooping cough, drought, and famine plaguing the tribe. Through blackmail, Mint has been forced to become the fourth wife of CHARBONNEAU, the seventy-three year old widower of Sacagawea. Upon hearing the rumor that Goes Ahead was killed, she hangs herself in desperation. When Bodmer and Goes Ahead finally return to the village with the Bundle, they find Broken Bone grieving at Mint's burial scaffold. Goes Ahead withdraws into grief and isolation. He is only brought out of it when Bodmer pleads for his assistance in doctoring Maximilian who suffers from malnutrition and scurvy. Depressed, derided by his tribe and betrayed by his religion, Goes Ahead leaves his world to accompany Maximilian and Bodmer to St. Louis. We witness his bewilderment and dismay at the debauchery abounding in the fur-trade city. Maximilian and Bodmer leave for Europe after arranging for Goes Ahead's education in St. Louis. In Paris, Maximilian has placed Bodmer in charge of getting the paintings published. However, because of the extremely high cost, Maximilian threatens to abandon the project. Bodmer goes ballistic. Now spiritually enlightened and guided, he is obsessed with preserving the images of a dying culture. This has become Bodmer's life purpose. His newfound spirit of American freedom cause him to aggressively confront Maximilian's European nobility and he presses for the absolute necessity and importance of publishing the material. He is a different man with a purpose- but he has little luck convincing the financiers in Europe and he's threatened with poverty. We see him in a Paris tenement anguishing over his inability to return to the Missouri and his love, the beautiful Indian woman Mrs. McKenzie. Skipping three years, it is 1837. Goes Ahead returns to his village dressed in white man's clothing and his hair cut short. Also a changed man. He finds the people decimated by smallpox, dead and dying. Four Bears gives his famous last oration about the gift of the white man before he too, dies. Despite feeling betrayed by the Creator, Goes Ahead vows to preserve what he can of the ancient traditions among those who survive. After killing Scalped Man in yet another raid on the vulnerable village and saving Good Voice in the attack, he nurses the sick, renews the Waterbuster Bundle, and contracts smallpox as well. We flash forward in time, returning to the contemporary reservation and the young Ivan Goes Ahead. Ivan and his elders have brought the repatriated Waterbuster Bundle home and are renewing it in a ceremony. Ivan vows to learn the traditions and carry them on. He has changed as well. He is given a trunk containing the ledger drawings of his great, great grandfather. Among the drawings, he discovers a daguerreotype photograph of Goes Ahead--as an old man with pox scars on his face. We realize he survived the smallpox epidemic and married Good Voice. In the distance stands an electric power generating plant in the same spot once occupied by the sacred Ark of the First Man. The power spot now has a different kind of power. Circling above it are the two Eagles from the Bundle. Epilogue Subtitle: "Of the 1,600 Mandan in 1837, only 32 survived the summer's smallpox epidemic. Four-fifths of the Assiniboin and Blackfeet perished, along with two-thirds of the Minnetaree, Arikara, and Atsina. The total number of smallpox victims along the Upper Missouri is estimated to have been over18,000; more than would fall in combat against the U.S. Army during the next 62 years of the century." "The original Waterbuster Bundle was purchased in 1907 by Gilbert Wilson, for the Museum of the American Indian. In 1938 it was repatriated back to the people."