Meek's Cut off works on a couple of levels.
1. It's a kind of revisionist western movie, at odds to show the real kind of people moving through the continental landscape and odyssey immortalised in old style westerns. These people were poor, religious, often clueless but fortified by their simplicity and determination to seek a fortune. The Indian presence highlights a tension and paradox for early settlers and their guides, where they were reliant on Indians and Indian knowledge to complete their journey. 2. The over all feel of the movie is one of hardship and breakdown of trust. It's about chance and gambling of one's life. Now this serves to emphasise a kind of truth about the risk early settlers took but it also reflects the traumatic journey the real Steven Meek took when he guided settlers through the Oregon desert back in the 19C. The film tweaks certain portrayals. Steven Meek is portrayed as a rough-neck, hard drinking never-do-well chancer who was quite capable of being a cold killer. This may well have been true for the guides like these who led the way through for the first settlers. But Meek was in real life a local fur trapper, who was married and both he and his wife worked hard to rescue the settlers they he had inadvertently led into adversity on that trip. Also to add that the native Indian who accompanied them was not a prisoner and came along specifically to make sure the party could keep near a good supply of water. The disastrous trip saw the loss of perhaps more than 1/10 of it's members but up to 1000 did finally reach safety which was in fact due to Meek's raising the alarm at a near by settlement. Much of the loss of life was due to camp fever and a shortage of supplies. Also the bringing of too many livestock helped to compete with grass and water supplies along the way. Meek was guilty of not knowing the landscape where he had indicated he did and this promoted despair and agitated the fatality rate. But to give him his due, the land at key sections had been utterly changed in appearance by drought that year and it was this that caused him to lead the party to near total disaster.
1. It's a kind of revisionist western movie, at odds to show the real kind of people moving through the continental landscape and odyssey immortalised in old style westerns. These people were poor, religious, often clueless but fortified by their simplicity and determination to seek a fortune. The Indian presence highlights a tension and paradox for early settlers and their guides, where they were reliant on Indians and Indian knowledge to complete their journey. 2. The over all feel of the movie is one of hardship and breakdown of trust. It's about chance and gambling of one's life. Now this serves to emphasise a kind of truth about the risk early settlers took but it also reflects the traumatic journey the real Steven Meek took when he guided settlers through the Oregon desert back in the 19C. The film tweaks certain portrayals. Steven Meek is portrayed as a rough-neck, hard drinking never-do-well chancer who was quite capable of being a cold killer. This may well have been true for the guides like these who led the way through for the first settlers. But Meek was in real life a local fur trapper, who was married and both he and his wife worked hard to rescue the settlers they he had inadvertently led into adversity on that trip. Also to add that the native Indian who accompanied them was not a prisoner and came along specifically to make sure the party could keep near a good supply of water. The disastrous trip saw the loss of perhaps more than 1/10 of it's members but up to 1000 did finally reach safety which was in fact due to Meek's raising the alarm at a near by settlement. Much of the loss of life was due to camp fever and a shortage of supplies. Also the bringing of too many livestock helped to compete with grass and water supplies along the way. Meek was guilty of not knowing the landscape where he had indicated he did and this promoted despair and agitated the fatality rate. But to give him his due, the land at key sections had been utterly changed in appearance by drought that year and it was this that caused him to lead the party to near total disaster.