Artwork by John Buscema
During a rainy night on the darkened streets of New York City, a hunter silently stalks his prey. The man being pursued turns to run as the assailant – dressed in traditional Native American attire and armed with only a tomahawk – finally confronts him.
“It is too late for you, Jason Birch, too late for you to do anything but die,” the hunter says. Before he can hurl his captive into a nearby construction pit, however, the synthezoid Avenger known as Vision suddenly appears and disrupts his plans. As the intended victim flees the scene, the Vision renders the Native American unconscious and carries him to Avengers Mansion.
Thus begins Avengers #80, published in July 1970. Although the hunter refers to himself as Red Wolf, he was born William Talltrees and raised on a Native American reservation that relied on tourism to fuel its economy. Tribesmen sold trinkets, performed carefully orchestrated “War Dances,” and endured the often patronizing remarks of the whites who passed through their land. At night, however, the Native Americans honored their heritage with more sacred ceremonial dances, including dedications to the Red Wolf – a great warrior who once descended from the sky to protect the tribe and destined to someday reappear during a time of great need.
As William Talltrees became older, he realized that the legend of Red Wolf was nothing more than myth – why else hadn’t the legendary warrior answered the prayers of the Native Americans who still believed in him?
William Talltrees went on to serve in the Vietnam War before moving to New York City and getting a job working construction as a “skywalker.” In the real world, Mohawks from the Akwesasne Nations became famous during the Great Depression as ironworkers in New York City. Seemingly fearless, these Native Americans made their way across the steel beams that formed the skeleton of New York skyscrapers and earned the nickname “skywalkers” as a result. Images of these skywalkers sitting on beams high above the streets while eating lunch are numerous, while the efforts of these Native Americans was vital to the construction of such legendary landmarks as the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and Rockefeller Center.
One such skywalker was Richard Oakes, who spent the bulk of the 1960s working on various construction jobs across the East Coast while sporadically attending Adirondack Community College and Syracuse University. When a brief marriage to the daughter of a Rhode Island police officer ended in 1968, Richard Oakes quit his job, sold his ironworker tools, and headed to San Francisco in search of a new life.
A white man named Cornelius Van Lunt has been trying to buy the land owned by William Talltrees’ father for years but to no avail. Unwilling to wait any longer, he sends a pair of his henchmen for a nighttime drive-by shooting that kills both father and mother. Knowing that the white man would never seek justice for the atrocity, William Talltrees dons the costume of Red Wolf and climbs the sacred mountain to perform the secret ritual alone in the hopes of resurrecting the ancient myth.
Although he succeeds, the outcome is far from what he expected. “The Red Wolf who shall arise this night lives not in the sky, not in the hollow of the Moon, but in the heart of one of the people,” he is told. “In you, young one – you are Red Wolf!”
Red Wolf followed Cornelius Van Lunt and his henchman Jason Birch to New York City but his plan to kill Birch was disrupted by the Vision. Vision now tells Red Wolf that although murder is never justice, he will assist the Native American in his quest nonetheless. Goliath and the Scarlet Witch offer to join in as well. An Avengers Quinjet easily transports them to the American Southwest, where they are attacked by an aircraft owned by Cornelius Van Lunt that results in Vision and the Scarlet Witch being captured.
In the Treaty of Fort Laramie – signed by the United States in 1868 – the Sioux secured the right to reclaim any land designated as surplus by the federal government. When the prison on Alcatraz Island was shut down in 1963 with no firm plans for the island’s future, a handful of Native Americans invoked the treaty and attempted to claim it as their own. On March 8, 1964, forty of them occupied Alcatraz for four hours, vacating only after being threatened with arrest.
As Kent Blansett recounts in his 2018 biography A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz and Red Power, Richard Oakes resurrected the plan during a joint Native American studies conference between San Francisco State College and the University of California, Berkeley. A sailor named Peter Bowan later ferried Oakes and close to ninety other Native Americans to Alcatraz during the early morning hours of November 20, 1969. A partial blockade by the U.S. Coast Guard resulted in only fourteen of them actually making it to the island, but it was enough to force the lone security guard to radio “mayday” and launch what would become a nineteen-month occupation.
Many white Americans stood in solidarity with the Native Americans by making their own trips to Alcatraz to drop off food and other supplies. The national press coverage, meanwhile, captured the imagination of non-Natives throughout the United States and around the world. An untold number mailed financial support ranging for one dollar to one hundred dollars each, and the Secretary of the Interior in Washington D.C. received thirty-to-forty letters a day, with over ninety-five percent of them siding with the Native Americans.
President Richard Nixon had no intentions of succumbing to their demands but refrained nonetheless from using physical force against the Native Americans. “U.S. Marshalls chasing screaming Indians through the echoing halls and cell-blocks of the old prison would be too Kafka-esque to contemplate,” presidential special assistant Leonard Garment said at the time. By June 14, 1971, however, few Native Americans remained on Alcatraz and press coverage had dwindled, resulting in federal marshals rounding up the last of the occupiers without incident and releasing them in San Francisco.
On December 19, 1968, Richard Oakes spoke at a poetry benefit in San Francisco. “Alcatraz is not an island, it’s an idea,” he told the crowd. “It’s in the hearts and minds of every Indian, whether they young, old or middle-aged. It’s the promise of tomorrow, so that the Indians can have something. It’s a betterment for the Indian people today.”
After being separated from Vision and the Scarlet Witch, Goliath and Red Wolf make their way to the Native American reservation. “There was another of the people who spoke out against the evil Van Lunt,” the tribal leader tells them. “He was Tommy Talltrees, my brother, and we buried him months ago, along with our hope. We want to believe you, wayfarer. I do not relish the thought that I am an Uncle Tomahawk.”
The words are interrupted by the sound of gunfire coming from two jeeps speeding towards them. Goliath easily dispatches one of the vehicles while Red Wolf uses his tomahawk to disable the other. They then interrogate one of the men, who admits to working for Van Lunt. “Now it is enough, you who call yourself Red Wolf,” the tribal leader says. “We have the proof for which we have waited. We will be Uncle Tomahawks no longer. We will march beside you to the hacienda of the man named Van Lunt.”
Once they arrive at the home of Cornelius Van Lunt, Red Wolf slips away and heads towards a nearby dam. “They must be planning to blow it up,” Van Lunt suspects. “They’ve always hated the dam because it diverts rivers which otherwise would water their lands, and now they hope to take things into their own hands.”
With a tied-up Scarlet Witch loaded into the back as protection, Van Lunt and his men travel to the dam in a helicopter and open fire on Red Wolf. The distraction allows the Scarlet Witch to free herself and use a hex spell to destroy the helicopter. The force of the eruption, however, causes damage to the dam as well. As Red Wolf makes his final stand against Van Lunt, the dam explodes and the pair plummet to their apparent deaths.
After everyone has returned to the Native American reservation, William Talltrees appears on the horizon. Goliath immediately recognizes him as Red Wolf but no one says a word. Instead Talltrees simply puts his arms around his uncle’s shoulder and says, “Let us talk no more of the past but only of the future. There is work to be done, reclaiming our land – and it is good to be home.”
Anthony Letizia