Honors Northeast, the honors program at Northeast Texas Community College, will premiere an original historical film Friday, Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. in the Whatley Center for the Performing Arts. The production, Sam Houston and the Fate of the Texas Cherokee, is the fifth film Honors Northeast has completed in the last five years.
Free refreshments and a brief panel discussion featuring NTCC scholars William Fox, William Jones, Presley McClendon, Ryan-Rose Mendoza, Cassidy Watkins, and Honors Director, Dr. Andrew Yox, will be featured after the film in the Whatley Foyer.† Admission is free and the public is welcome.
This year?s one-hour film traces the relationship of Texas? founding father with the Cherokee, their estrangement, the tragic Battle of the Neches, and the transformation of Houston as well as the surviving Cherokee.
The film is an action-packed story of romance, betrayal, and war that interprets the exodus of the sizable Cherokee community in Northeast Texas in 1839,? Yox said.
Starring NTCC Scholar William Jones as Sam Houston, the student-made film treats the western trek of the traditionalist Cherokee tribe led by Chief Bowles (William Fox) to their twenty-year home, north of Nacogdoches.†The plot receives a hopeful twist when Sam Houston, an adopted son of the Cherokee and husband of a Cherokee princess, Diana Rogers (Adriana Rodriguez) moves to Nacogdoches, and becomes the Texan leader.
But can or will Houston prevent his fellow Texans, especially supporters of a new President, Mirabeau Lamar (played by Joshua Yox), from wiping the Cherokee off the face of Texas? The film, following a suggestion of East Texas Journal publisher, Hudson Old, was created entirely by Honors Northeast. †NTCC Scholar, Cassidy Watkins of Daingerfield is the film?s editor and producer.
?This year?s cinematic effort treats an Indian presence in our region that was remarkable for its brief intensity, and significance. Local museums and schools teach that Northeast Texas was the original home of the Caddo Indians, with their bee-hive styled homes and mysteriously textured pots.† And yet the Cherokee, who lasted only twenty years here, were about as influential,? Yox said.
Yox noted: ?A two-hour drive south from Mount Pleasant brings one not to Caddo but to Cherokee County.†Nacogdoches has a statue of Cherokee Chief Bowles, but we lack a Caddoan parallel to personalize their story. The first Clarksville-to-Nacogdoches road, was not some 271 or 59 expressway, but the Cherokee Trace. We know of Caddoan trails, but it was the Cherokee who lined their more formal Northeast Texas highway with honeysuckle hedgerows, and rose bushes.?
Thanks to a Whatley Employee Enhancement Grant, the support of Jerald and Mary Lou Mowery, the Friends of Honors Northeast, and institutional support, members of Honors Northeast were able to research the story last summer in Austin. It was filmed last August in Nacogdoches. The Honors Northeast team was led by Director, Presley McClendon, Unit Production Director, Ryan-Rose Mendoza, and cinematographers Rachel Jordan and Ariana Rodriguez. They finished shooting all 65 scenes at historical sites, including the 180-year-old Tol Barrett house, the historical village--Millard?s Crossing, and several antique area Bread-and-Breakfast homes. Kassandra Martinez worked at breakneck speed as Makeup Director; Emmalea Shaw and Alecia Spurlin worked as directors of costumes and props.
Other students who also appear with major roles in the film are Emmalea Shaw as Houston?s first wife, Eliza Allen; Alecia Spurlin as Houston?s mother, Elizabeth; Hayden Duncan as Edward Burleson, Alicia Cantrell, Kassandra Martinez, Melody Mott and Leivy Zuniga as Cherokee maidens, Hialeah, Adsila, Immookalea, and Hiawassee.
