In the Days of the Thundering Herd (1914)
released 30th November 1914
Cast:
Tom Mix
Bessie Eyton
Wheeler Oakman
Red Wing
John Bowers
In the Days of the Thundering Herd (1914)
Drama, Western
48m
Selig Polyscope
Director:
Colin Campbell
Writer:
Gilson Willets
By the time he came to make his first feature in 1914, Tom Mix already had over 80 shorts to his name after teaming up with self-styled Colonel William Selig in 1910. Mix granted the Selig Company access to his ranch to film a semi-documentary called Ranch Life in the Great South West, and once filming was complete, the company offered him a position behind the camera. At first, he acted as an advisor, wrangled livestock and stood in for actors, but it wasn’t long before he was performing in front of the cameras. Mix, born in Pennsylvania (6th January, 1880), far from the western plains, was a drifter after deserting from the army (despite his unit never seeing action), who worked as a bartender, ranch hand and rodeo rider. However, the movie industry publicity machine convinced the world its premier Western star was the son of a soldier wounded at the Battle of Wounded Knee and rode with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders after graduating from the Virginia Military Institute. He also served as a scout during the Spanish-American War, then, after a spell fighting in China at the Battle of Tien-Tsin, enlisted as a Texas Ranger after growing bored with civilian life. He also took part in the Boer War. And the Mexican Revolution. Indeed, had space flight been a thing in the early twentieth century, Selig might well have assured us his star had conquered Mars before pulling on his cowboy boots.
Whatever the truth about Mix’s past, there is no doubting he was a major star of the early screen, rivalling Gilbert M. ‘Broncho Billy’ Anderson as the world’s favourite Western star (“An excellent rider but a bad actor” was Anderson’s opinion of his competitor). While Anderson’s star was waning by 1914, Mix’s was rising, and would see off a determined challenge from William S. Hart, whose grim, realistic scenarios were the very antithesis of Mix’s clean-cut, all-action heroics.
His earliest films were crude and quickly thrown together, with no sign of the showbiz dazzle he added to his costumes later in his career. As Mix grew accustomed to the medium, he began writing and directing, focusing more on scenarios that showed off his prowess in the saddle. In the Days of the Thundering Herd, a film which harks back to when vast herds of buffalo roamed the plains, provides a prime example. Mix’s first feature-length film – and the first western written for the screen rather than adapted from an existing work – shows the athletic star vaulting between horses as a Pony Express rider before stooping in his saddle to sweep leading lady Bessie Eyton from the path of a stampeding herd of buffalo.
Colin Campbell
Tom Mix and Bessie Eyton in Colin Campbell's In the Days of the Thundering Herd (1914)
Although the full five-reel film apparently still exists, the print generally available is a three-reel re-issued version in poor condition that inevitably impacts one’s enjoyment. Despite this, the film’s limitless energy shines through the scuffs and scratches. It also shows that the familiar tropes of the long-form Western were firmly in place even then: gold prospectors, stampedes, marauding Indians who speak pidgin English (“take um camp!”) and encircle wagon trains – all are crammed into his breathless adventure.
Mix plays Tom Mingle, a Pony Express rider who travels with his fiancée to California after delivering a letter to her from her father that is filled with gold dust and beseeching her to follow him there. Unfortunately, the wagon train they join - and which votes Tom its wagon master - is attacked by Indians.
Director Colin Campbell shot much of the film at a 7,000-acre buffalo ranch in Pawnee, Oklahoma, owned by Gordon W. Lillie, a Wild West showman known professionally as Pawnee Bill, making use of what Lillie claimed was the largest buffalo herd in existence. The crew found Native Americans within Oklahoma to play the marauding Indians, but had to manufacture their teepees in Chicago and truck them to the ranch. Selig reportedly insisted that they spare no expense to “give an accurate glimpse of life” in the mid-19th Century West, demanding “historical correctness, both in incidents and detail.”
Wheeler Oakman, who would become a mainstay of low-budget Westerns later in life, plays an Indian chief here, but Native American actress Red Wing plays the squaw who helps Mix and Eyton escape from their captors. Born Lilian St. Cyr, she also co-starred in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man – the first feature made in Hollywood – in the same year. In the Days of the Thundering Herd also marked one of the last appearances of Old Blue, the faithful horse who had accompanied Mix on over 50 of his screen adventures. Mix finally put him out to pasture and replaced him with a new friend, Tony, who would become even more familiar to western fans than his predecessor. Old Blue lived another eighteen years, dying in 1932. He was interred in Mixville, the set on which Mix shot many of his films. Mix had a wooden pillar with a projecting beam placed over Old Blue’s grave so that he could hang a wreath of flowers over his old partner’s final resting place.
James S. McQuade, writing for the Moving Picture World, stated, “The five reels teem with action and radiate with atmosphere of the old days with a vividness that can be felt. One is translated from the wonders of modern days to the old Santa Fe trail and the long, winding lane of “prairie schooners” headed towards the setting sun.”