The Lone Ranger's Black Veil

[Update: The story has been published in the Spring 2014 issue of The Yellow Medicine Review.]

The following is a short-short story I wrote awhile back but which has not found a publishing home.  But with the release of The Lone Ranger, I thought I would go ahead and give it a home here.  Honestly, it was written before I had heard Johnny Depp was working on the movie.  It was inspired after re-reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Minister's Black Veil."  I have not posted anything recently on Depp's portrayal of Tonto because others have posted plenty, and I already made some comments on the issue after pictures from the set were first leaked: "Tonto Shops at J. Crow."  An interesting difference between my story and the film is Tonto's tribal affiliation.  The film has made Tonto a Comanche, but in the radio and TV series, Tonto was either Apache or Kiowa (sources differ on that).  The Apache and the Comanche were bitter enemies through much of the history of the Southwest, and my story hinges upon that.

The Lone Ranger’s Black Veil

LR is serious about the mask.  No one can touch it.  No one can ask about it.  I am the only other person who knows its story.  My name is Tonto – that’s not my real name, not my Apache name, just some stupid name he made up because he thought it sounded more heroic.  He is such a drama queen. 

And now he is lying on his deathbed – shot in the back – and still wearing his mask.  He has his gun out, keeping the doctor away because the doc wanted to remove the mask.  He’d rather die than be revealed.  Geesh.

His mask is not what everyone imagines, the one that makes him look like some stupid raccoon.  Don’t you think you could recognize someone if he was wearing that mask?  No one looks at a raccoon and wonders, “What is that?  Is that a dog?”

No, his mask is a piece of black gauze hanging over his face.  He can see through it, but you can’t clearly see his face beneath it.  And he never takes it off in front of anyone.  Not even me.  But I know its story.

The Texas Rangers were created to kill Indians, and they were good at it.  They were ordered West, to fight Comanches, and that is when I came looking for them.  But first they ran to East Texas and killed a bunch of Cherokees and the like who were farming, minding their own business, living in wood houses, wearing shirts and pants and dresses, going to church, not causing anyone any trouble.  Other than being Indian. 

When he saw the innocent people he had killed, he came to his senses and went crazy at the same time.  LR put on the black mask and killed the men in his unit.  That story of him being the only survivor of his unit after an ambush?  Just part of the myth.  That mask was a sign of his sinful nature.

“We all see the world through a veil of our own sins,” he told me many times.  He had the habit of sounding like a preacher.  “And I am here to remind people that we cannot escape that fact.  Nor can we escape the Lord’s justice.  That is why I have dedicated myself to hunting down bad men, bad men like myself.  For who knows their ways better than I?” 

“That’s great,” I told him just as often.  “There are plenty of bad men out in West Texas.  They’re called Comanches.”

But the only bad men who caught his eye looked like him.

On his deathbed now, with a gang of white folks trying to talk their way past his pistol and into his room, he keeps muttering, “Expiation.” 

I spent a lifetime wasting my energy, trying to get that old fool to do what he was originally so good at.  But I could never cajole, coax, or coyote him to West Texas.  What did I care about his redemption?  I wanted my revenge.  They killed my brother.  They kidnapped my young cousin.  Probably married her off to one of their own or sold her to some Mexicans.  They even took my dog.   They probably ate it.  I wanted him to come out West and kill some goddamned Comanches. 

Stupid white men.  You can’t count on them for nothing.

Tonto Shops at J. Crow

Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer

I don't know what to think about Johnny Depp's Tonto.  Jerry Bruckheimer apparently tweeted an image from the set of the film The Lone Ranger, and picture has been flying around the Internet this week.

The image and the discussions surrounding it raise the issue of authenticity.

Depp's headpiece has gathered the most attention.  (For the moment, I will set aside the issue of casting Depp as an American Indian.)  Some friends were pointing out that the headpiece seems inspired by a painting (I am Crow by Kirby Sattler).  This accessorized bird raises the question of why would Tonto be wearing a headpiece from the Crow?  Tonto was apparently Apache or Potowatomi (I have seen different references from histories of The Lone Ranger series).  After the 1830s the Potowatomi would have lived primarily in Kansas and Nebraska, having ceded their lands in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois.  At the same time, the Apache lived pretty much where they always had: New Mexico, Arizona, West Texas, and Northern Mexico.  At that time, the Crow were living in Montana and Wyoming.

So some might ask how Tonto would have come upon such a headpiece.  Perhaps he saw it in a J. Crow catalog.

Texas Rangers

But is it worthwhile asking about the historical accuracy of Tonto's headgear?  No one asks if a Texas Ranger would have worn the clothes Armie Hammer is pictured in.  (Instead, people should be asking about his name.  Really?)  No one asks about the historical accuracy of the Lone Ranger's clothes or that hat.  As you can see from this image of Texas Rangers from the late 1800s, many of them did wear suits and vests, but the lapels are very different from Hammer's.  And their hats are shaped differently.  The Lone Ranger in the latest movie seems to have stopped by the Men's Wearhouse before hitting the trail.

No one ever wonders about the Lone Ranger's mask -- is that really going to keep anyone from recognizing him?  We understand the mask to be functioning as the sign of "disguise" and we do not question its ability to truly hide an identity.

No one asks about the historical accuracy of a Texas Ranger being friends with an American Indian.  One of the main reasons for the creation of the Texas Rangers was to kill Indians.  The Comanches on the western edge of Texas were giving the Texans fits, and so the Rangers were sent out to deal with them.

The Lone Ranger is a historical fantasy, not history.  A historical fantasy tries to rewrite the past to make it more consistent with the present.  People re-imagine their past to reinforce their beliefs about themselves today.  America wants to think of itself as racially tolerant, as completely comfortable in its multicultural self, so it imagines a Texas Ranger and an American Indian being great friends to help it forget the ugly facts of frontier history.

Clayton Moore & Jay Silverheels

So, since it is fantasy, why should we care about authenticity?  Tonto and the Lone Ranger are iconic functions, not real people.  The white cowboy hat identifies Hammer as a justice-seeking white American, as an ideal rather than a person.  Depp may be giving up the head band and buckskin that Jay Silverheels wore in the television series, but his dead bird headpiece and face paint are still  functioning iconically.  Look!  A Good Guy!  Look!  An Indian! 

Is it silly to ask for authenticity in depictions of Tonto?  The character of Tonto never had any authenticity.  Like many American Indians in American film and literature, he was the figment of white America's imagination.

I do not want dismiss the real-world implications of such stereotypical depictions.  I wrote about this in "Symbolic Indians vs. Smiling Indians."  But the whole Lone Ranger franchise is a kind of drag show, so perhaps no one should take it too seriously.  Perhaps we should lean back and laugh at its latest version, even laughing at the parts it may be trying to get right. Or at least wait until the movie is released and see how it all plays out.