Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Indians on River



One of my favorite geeky things to do is to compare vintage Disneyland photos with more recent examples, and to try to spot all of the many changes that have occurred over 50 years. In these two examples, the changes are not exactly subtle! The top image (from an undated slide) shows a friendly indian on horseback, saluting us as we pass by in the Mark Twain (the natives call it "penelore", which we all know means "fire canoe"!). At this stage, he has no feathered bonnet, and instead of a war party behind him, there is a lone warrior at the top of the rise.

The second photo is from August, 1958. Still pretty early! By now he looks the part of a full-fledged chief, and he is backed up by a gang of tough looking customers. I hope they weren't the guys who set fire to the settler's cabin.

Eventually the chief was alone on the riverbank. The foliage behind him had matured to the point where guests wouldn't have seen the war party...and maybe the static figures were considered too primitive.

4 comments:

thepicklebarrel said...

um...yeah. that's pretty geeky.

don't do it again. ;)

nice pics! i can't imagine how many you went through to find the same view.

i gotta start posting again to keep up with you guys!

Matterhorn1959 said...

Great set of images and very informative. Now if one of the locals could show a shot of how the river bank looks now.

Chris Merritt said...

Anyone have a shot of the whole "unfriendly" Indian war party from the bank? They were still up there in 1990 when I piloted the Twain... When did they get pulled out? Amazon Belle?

Amazon Belle said...

Tangaroa, I believe they were pulled when the whole river received the upgrade around 1992/93.