That's funny. I didn't get that all from Dances With Wolves. I remember watching a band of Indians brutally slaughter a homesteading family in that family. I remember some white men seriously mistreat Indians, but it was made clear that they were the absolute dregs of society, who were sent to the western frontier to get rid of them.
Although they'll deny it, the Lakota Sioux's folklore even supports the notion that they were originally from the finger lakes region of New York. As white men moved into North America, the Lakota fell back to territories which were made habitable only with the introduction of the rifle and the horse. Utopian? Hardly, but they were fairly passive among the Indian tribes which were not readily assimilated.
(Contrary to PC, most Indian tribes disappeared more because they assimilated then because they were slaughtered. I know I've got Indian ancestors; most people whose families are pre-Revolution Americans do.)
The movie presented one tribe which it allowed was exceptional in its passivity, and showed an unfortunate struggle against Americans who it did allow were exceptional among Americans in their abusiveness. It showed damn good reason why settlers were in general less than angelic around Indians.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'll be a little more specific in the scenes that really bothered me. The officer that pretended to be Napolian(sp), peed his pants then shot himself. I generally despise the way that hollywood portrays the military anyway and this was no exception. They spent so much time showing our hero documenting his thoughts and art and then they showed 2 thugs who were practically cavemen using his diary as toilet paper. The looser who drove him out there and was later shot by the token evil indians. The perfect peace and harmony and love of nature and mutual respect that the Sioux were represented as having. They belabored the shooting of the wolf for fun and the killing of buffalo for their hides. There was never one single tiny token of truth about Christianity among whitemen. We were just all disgusting thugs. Hated it.