Wagon Train (TV Series) The Sarah Drummond Story (1958) User Reviews

Tackling a tough and timely subject 55 years ago

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 16 June 2013]

I'm giving this episode eight points just for tackling the subject. The show opens with a pioneer, Jeb Drummond, off to join a party of men to clean out a group of Indians that are menacingly close to the settlement. The man s wife Sarah, stays behind. An Indian, seeing that the husband has left, approaches the cabin. A short time later Sarah hears someone at the door. Thinking it is her husband she opens the door. She grimaces in terror and the camera cuts away. The implication is that the Indian rapes her.

The next time we see Sarah Drummond she is large with child. Now Sarah and her husband have been married eleven years and no children. She is raped by an Indian and - boom! - she's pregnant. Now it could be her husband's child but, the odds are against it. When the baby is born it is obviously the child of rape due to his Indian features. The neighbor, Walt Archer, who hates all Indians and had Sarah's husband go out on a raiding party in the first place the night she was raped is present at the birth and is disgusted at the sight of the child, saying Sarah should have killed herself before things got this far. Sarah's husband decides the only thing to do, given the feeling of the white settlers around them - and therefore the feeling of white settlers anywhere - is to give the child to a nearby tribe to raise. He has difficulty on this issue with Sarah because Sarah loves the child and wants to keep it.

Meanwhile, Walt Archer's mother, catatonic since a raid on Walt's home as a child where their home was burned and his father was killed, is shocked by the sight of blood on Walt's forehead, the result of a fist fight with the wagon train's Flint McCoulough. She speaks for the first time in maybe twenty years and finally blurts out what happened - a white man in the area burned their home and killed Walt's dad, not an Indian, as Walt has presumed was true all of these years.

Suddenly Walt is all apologetic to the Drummonds who are getting ready to pull up stakes and move to escape the shunning that Walt is responsible for. Walt basically says if he could hate all Indians all of these years because of what he thought were the actions of one Indian, then he would have to hate all white men because of the actions of one white man. Since that would be ridiculous, it made him realize his feelings were the product of racism, not just a desire to protect the community from the same thing that had happened to his family. The Indian woman who took the child from the Drummonds - at their request - returns him and says "you be happy now".

I'm spoiling this entire episode because the plot is beside the point. In fact Walt's racism is an issue separate and apart as to how a couple would feel raising a child of rape. How could the mother look into the eyes of a child as it grows, maybe eventually seeing the features of her attacker, and feel towards that child like she would any other child - be it her natural born child or one adopted? Of course, all Indians are not savages, they never were. But the one who raped Sarah was a savage for the reason that all rapists are savages, and for no other reason.

I saw this episode in 1978, and it was just amazing to me that such a complex subject was being raised and tackled in a 1958 TV series when pregnancy resulting from rape was just not talked about and was considered entirely "a woman's problem". If you ever get a chance to see this episode, give it a look. Outstanding work by everyone in the cast and kudos in particular to June Lockhart who played Sarah Drummond - pioneer, wife, mother, and rape victim. Highly recommended.

You've got to be carefully taught

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 30 January 2018]

Flint McCullough takes refuge with a settler during a driving rainstorm and his most pregnant due at any minute wife. June Lockhart is in desperate need of a doctor, but her husband Gene Evans won't let her have any medical attention.

The reasons are soon discovered. Lockhart's new arrival might not be from Evans. Some passing Sioux raiders had their way with her and he is understandably one upset man. He's also further egged on in his prejudices by his neighbor William Talman who really hates Indians. So much so that Talman even frowns on his wife Lorna Thayer helping Lockhart in her pregnancy and Thayer is a local midwife.

This one is a very powerful story and not one seen on even adult westerns like Wagon Train. The subject had been dealt with in a very good Barbara Stanwyck western Trooper Hook the year before.

I'm not sure in real life it would have ended as it did. Still this is one of Wagon Train's best first season episodes.

Remarkable for its time

[aviblack · 8/10 · 14 December 2022]

I have to disagree with grizzledgeezer's review on a couple of points.

First: while much of TV in the 50's was insipid, pollyanish and monocultural, there were notable exceptions, and not just a few. We may envision American culture of that era as a Happy Days pastiche, but things were roiling under that surface, and performing arts like movies (and even TV) reflected those tensions.

Second: the baby "should" have been sent to live with the adoptive Sioux mother? If so, not for the reason gg gives. Why not imagine and aspire to a better world, and fight for it, even against the worst of human impulses? Why not suggest that the white world - of the time in which the story is set, as well as the time in which it was told - could learn to self-examine, and to (as one example) accept mixed-race kids just as Native societies could? And the penultimate scene with the little girl emphasizes that racism is learned behavior. It's a message that transcends time.

I'd add that I did take off a couple of points for the awkward, even preachy, way the grandmother reveals her secret and William Talman reaches his epiphany. It's worth a good chuckle, though: one could imagine her crumbling under Perry Mason's withering cross-examination and Hamilton Burger having to acknowledge yet another defeat. Only this time, the DA himself convinces the witness into the big reveal.

Doesn't go far enough....

[grizzledgeezer · 6/10 · 6 July 2013]

The other reviewer has done an excellent job of summarizing the themes of this story, and how they're handled. Given how insipid and conservative most television of 55 years ago was, "The Sarah Drummond Story" is a remarkable piece of episodic TV. *

Nevertheless... Though it's well-written and directly addresses the issues with only a little liberal preaching, it nevertheless doesn't go far enough. The husband (Gene Evans) correctly recognizes that a "hybrid" child can't -- for its own sake -- be raised among whites. Yet the story ends with the assumption that because the whites have risen above their prejudices, the child will have no problems. The story /should/ have ended with the baby being sent off with the Indian woman.

* Though comparable in quality to "Gunsmoke", "Wagon Train" is a largely forgotten series. This might be due to its being in B&W (and quite handsome B&W), though that doesn't seem to have affected the long-term popularity of other B&W series. Nevertheless, as "Wagon Train" would have been an ideal program to promote color TV, it's odd NBC chose to shoot it in monochrome.