The Last of the Line is a 1914 short film (20 minutes) directed by Jay Hunt.
Gray Otter, a chief of the Lakota Sioux, sends off his only son, Tiah, to be taught in white schools. Gray Otter's hope is that "the white man's learning" will make Tiah wise and allow him to rule the tribe well.
Instead, Tiah (Sessue Hayakawa) comes back from education in the white man's world as a stumbling drunkard. Worse, he is morally depraved, attempting to rape one of the women of the tribe. Tragedy ensues when Tiah leads some "renegades" in an attack on the payroll wagon headed to the nearby U.S. Army fort.
Although Sessue Hayakawa was Japanese, most of the rest of the cast, including Joe Goodboy as Gray Otter, were actual Lakota Sioux. (Compare most Hollywood depictions of Native Americans both in this era and decades actor, which usually used Brownface.)
Tropes:
- Bad Guy Bar: The briefly-seen bar where Tiah recruits fellow drunks into robbing the stagecoach.
- Downer Ending: The film ends with Gray Otter, alone (a title card even says "Alone"), mourning at his son's grave, all his hopes dashed.
- Establishing Character Moment: Gray Otter talks excitedly about how Tiah is coming home to take his place of leadership in the tribe. Cut to Tiah, at the train station, waving around a flask and so drunk he can barely stand.
- Flashback: A brief flashback to Gray Otter holding baby Tiah, and talking with enthusiasm about how the boy will grow to be a wise leader, just makes it sadder when Tiah arrives and is revealed as a drunken reprobate.
- Injun Country: Sort of—it's a mixture of Sioux and whites attacking a stagecoach, but the implication is that the true Injun Country days are over with. The men Tiah rounds up are called "renegades".
- The Last Title: The Last of the Line, referring both literally to the fact that Gray Otter's line is finished with the death of his son, and also more symbolically to the end of the Lakota way of life.
- Missing Mom: Tiah's mom is shown holding the baby in the flashback but no mention is made of her when adult Tiah comes home some 20-odd years later.
- Twilight of the Old West: The time frame, although vague, seems to be this. Gray Wolf signs a peace treaty with the local whites and it seems as if the Wild West days are over.
- Time Skip: "Two months pass" between Tiah's arrival and Gray Wolf's discovery that his son is a drunken lout, and the second act in which Gray Otter signs a peace agreement with the local U.S. Army post.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Gray Otter finds his son's body—in fact, it was Gray Otter who shot him—and realizes that Tiah was one of the bandits. Determined that his son not be remembered as a thief, Gray Otter moves Tiah's body into the pile of soldier corpses. He tells the soldiers that Tiah joined the men on the wagon and died protecting it, and the whites bury Tiah's body with full honors.
