A Redcoat detachment arrives at Boonesborough and declares the settlers are trespassing on Crown land and must clear out. Yadkin objects, and is shot and wounded for his trouble. Dispatched to Williamsburg, Va. To investigate, Daniel and Mingo are informed by the royal governor (Walter Pidgeon) that the treaty with the Cherokees ceding Kentucky is invalid.
Another history-based early series hour, if (for reasons explained below) a convoluted one. Carrying guest star duties with aplomb as Governor Dunsmore is the urbane Walter Pidgeon, a notable star of the Hollywood Golden Age firmament; his stage elegance seems almost too good for network TV. He is also the vehicle for major reveals in Mingo's backstory. Also along is TV journeyman John Vivyan as Pidgeon's main Redcoat subordinate. 1950's ethnic role specialist Abraham Sofaer is a Tuscarora chief.
The main course this week is history with a generous side of fiction, so let us deconstruct:
* Research was probably a five-minute skim of encyclopedia articles. The episode attempts to look at the British Proclamation Line of 1763, which sought to restrict post-French and Indian War settlement west of the Alleghenies. London was worried about its ability to govern that far from the coastline, and wanted to maintain the North American interior as a permanent fur trading zone. But the fictional decree here is intended as a Crown land grab.
* This is a runup-to-Revolution story, but no such period existed in Kentucky; Boonesborough was settled in 1775 about the same time fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord.
* Pidgeon refers back to a 1703 William Penn treaty as governing Kentucky's title. No such treaty; the closest agreement is the 1683 Treaty of Shackamaxon, which dealt strictly with the Lenape tribe, the Quakers, and Pennsylvania matters.
* The treaty dispute is one of dueling agreements, one ceding Kentucky from the Cherokee and another from the Tuscarora. No such niceties were observed by any Kentucky settlers; they simply moved in.
* Kentucky at the time was more or less contested neutral ground between the Shawnee to the north and the Cherokee to the south. The Tuscarora, much reduced in numbers, were largely out of it and refugees headed toward northern Pennsylvania.
* Reference is made to "three regiments" of Redcoats ready to enforce eviction; no such force anywhere near Virginia in the 1770's.
* Finally, "Lord Dunsmore" is a stand-in for Lord Dunmore (John Murray), last royal governor of Virginia (1771-75). Dunmore was an early combatant against the Patriot forces early in the war, but no record of him engaging in any large-scale pre-war land grabs such as this.
Redcoat report - about 10, impossible to tell which regiment portrayed due to black and white film.
The episode strives valiantly (if inaccurately) to depict pre-Revolutionary maneuverings, and the minimal action is more than offset by Pidgeon's drawing room maneuverings. A well-done early vignette for the series.
