WHo are the Wa Tan Ye indians in Music Man?
(If I had to hazard an explanation, I'd say that there likely isn't any such tribal group. What Meredith Willson was trying to do was evoke a theme of pageantry that was popular with schools and civic groups in 1912. The frontier had closed only quite recently, the Indians had only recently been confined to reservations, and there was lots of nostalgia for the days of the open prairie - still within living memory of oldtimers, but receding rapidly. These were the days of Teddy Roosevelt's vigor, of "Call of the Wild", of the Boy Scouts, and persistent fears that America had gone soft and corrupt, as the song 'Ya Got Trouble' gives evidence.
More here.)
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