A pioneer woman goes on a spiritual and healing journey when she travels through outlaw territory to retrieve her wounded husband in the aftermath of the Civil War.
It is called Whiskey Chitto Woman
It is a Western road trip drama.
In the vein of Nomadland
It is like Little Women meets Cold Mountain
It follows determined pioneer woman Ellen Johnson
And naïve teenage boy Sammy Jones
As they take a hazardous journey through the outlaw-infested, devastated countryside of post-Civil War Louisiana to retrieve her husband Aaron whose leg has been amputated.
Problems arise when they encounter highwaymen and Ellen wonders how Aaron will adjust as a disabled man in an agrarian society.
Together their determined pioneer spirit and love will overcome the obstacles in their way and finish their journey strong.
The idea came to me when I was doing genealogy research while reading Whiskey Chitto Woman I found out that Aaron and Ellen Johnson were my great-great-great uncle and aunt.
My unique approach would be a Western set in post-war Louisiana that is not only a road trip movie but also a spiritual and emotional journey for the characters.
A set piece would be when Aaron and Ellen are sharing a large meal with their family and neighbors. Aaron has lost a leg and looks around at the foods that he will never be able to plant and harvest again. He takes his crutch, leaves the table, and sulks off into the forest. Ellen follows him, concerned. She finds him dragging a tree stump. He says he intends to whittle himself a wooden leg. Ellen takes part of the tree stump and helps him drag it back to the meal.
Target audiences would be men and women (30-80), fans of Westerns, readers of Westerns, pioneer, and historical romance novels, nature lovers, Civil War buffs, and Louisianans.
Audiences would like to see it for its themes of pioneer determination, endurance, faithfulness, love, community, family, trauma recovery, healing, spiritual and emotional journey, the natural beauty of its frontier setting, its adventure and action, and its Western aesthetic and historical setting.
In 2024 I plan on focusing on Westerns since they are making a comeback in popularity. Producers are especially looking for ideas based on true stories, events, and historical figures.
The first book I would like to pitch as a Western is Whiskey Chitto Woman: A Civil War Novel by Marguerite Hudson, from Authorhouse. The book is similar to Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier as it is based on Hudson’s family history. Only it switches genders as it is a woman’s journey to find her beloved soldier. It also has a happier ending.
Ellen Lucinda Huggins was adopted by the Johnsons of what is now Vernon Parish when she was twelve. Their son Aaron was six years older than her. They married in 1861 when he was twenty-six. By the time he mustered into Confederate service as a private in Company H of the Cresent Louisiana Infantry two years later, they had one small child and another one on the way.
Ellen remained at their dogtrot house alongside Cherrywinche Creek, a 70-odd mile-long body of water named Ouiska Chitto (Big Cane) by the Indians in western Louisiana. Some folks just call it Whiskey Chitto Creek. Aaron is wounded at the Battle of Mansfield in April 1864 and his leg is amputated.
In June 1865 Ellen received word that her husband had been taken by riverboat down the Red River to be paroled at Alexandria. With a teenage boy and his dog accompanying her, she loaded up her wagon to travel sixty miles through the war-torn wilderness of western Louisiana teaming with outlaws to get her man back.
An adaptation of Whiskey Chitto Woman might look something like the following.
ACT I
Beginnings (Page 1-10)
A very pregnant Ellen works on the homestead along Cherrywinche while Aaron prepares to go into battle at Mansfield. Aaron goes into battle while Ellen goes into labor. Aaron is wounded in the leg and taken to a field hospital. Ellen is taken inside the dogtrot and laid in a bed. One side is empty. Aaron’s leg is sawed off, leaving an empty pants leg, while Ellen gives birth. (A film would show this using intercuts)
Inciting Incident (Pages 10-15)
A year later. Aaron’s father, “Poppa” John L. “Saddler” Johnson brings Ellen a letter from Aaron. It is a surprise since the mail service has been interrupted by the war. It informs Ellen that Aaron is at a nursing home in Alexandria after being paroled but has no way to reach her.
Ellen decides to load up her wagon, leave her children with “Poppa” John and go to “Alex” to get her husband.
Second Thoughts and Climax of Act Three (Pages 15-25)
However not only will she have to travel sixty miles through a war-torn countryside where the infrastructure has been destroyed and filled with Jayhawkers, ex-soldiers, and freed slaves, but the area she is starting from is the infamous Neutral Ground – No Man’s Land of west Louisiana. Once known as the Free State of Sabine due it its status as a no-go zone for European authority, it still has an outlaw culture and besides outlaws and cattle thieves left over from that period, it has become a haven for deserters, conscript dodgers, runaway slaves, and Unionists during the war.
Ellen will need a traveling companion. She settles on a teenage boy named Sammy James and his dog, Leop. Sammy is eager to go since it might be his only chance to ever travel more than a few miles from home. She loads up her wagon, including a bed for Aaron, and a keg for sterilizing water. “Poppa” John will accompany her on the first leg of the trip.
ACT II
Obstacles (pages 25-35)
Ellen drives the wagon under a canopy of enormous trees shielding them from the sunlight. They hear stories of outlaws robbing refugees traveling the same road. When they reach a bridge of two giant pine trees laid across the creek Poppa John departs.
Now Ellen is in charge.
This would be like the moment in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring when Samwise Gamgee begins his journey away from the Shire and stops and says, “If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.” In 19th century America when most folk rarely ever traveled more than 10 miles beyond their hometown, this scene is very explicable to the emotion of Ellen’s story.
Along the way, Ellen and Sammy meet a variety of characters. They meet a general store owner named Ceebe, strangers who don’t give their names, a stranger who says he fought alongside someone named Aaron Johnson but from the description Ellen gives him decides it must have been someone else, and a mail carrier who has no letters for anyone named Johnson. There’s an incident where a black bear frightens oxen and causes turkeys to escape cages on a wagon. Sammy catches the turkeys, while the bear is shot by a traveler, falls dead from a tree, and lands on the road. Sammy learns about human nature as he attends a brush arbor revival meeting.
Rising Obstacles (35-45)
A motif throughout the journey is the empty bed for Aaron, symbolizing the uncertainty of the future. Every time Ellen looks at it she wonders if Aaron is depressed, if he would ever walk again, if he was in pain. She wonders if he will ever find work with just one leg. She has nightmares in which eyes are looking out of the dark forest sinisterly and accusingly at her.
Ellen’s journey takes her past Confederate corrals, trash camps, and other military infrastructure left over from the war. Rains turn the roads into ruts and suck the wagon wheels deep. One of the horses starts to walk lamely. Ellen and Sammy meet a peddler, a black couple heading toward a rumored settlement for freed slaves near Cherrywinche or Ten Mile Creek, and a stranger who fixes the problem with the lame horse’s shoe. Sammy meets some refugees and learns about human nature when he plays a game of Mumblety-peg with them, where players throw knives between their feet, and whoever lands the blade closest to their foot wins.
Ellen and Sammy are held up by highwaymen who decide they will not rob them yet. One of them is a stranger they talked with earlier on their journey. They do not want the Johnson clan after them. And they figure Aaron will have money on himself when Ellen returns that way with him. That night Ellen has another nightmare about Aaron having two legs, but he is still struggling through a swamp.
The terrain changes from the rusty sand of the hills to the dark black soil of the bottomland. Ellen and Sammy journey through an area devastated by the Union Army on its retreat from the Battle of Mansfield. Destroyed buildings, dead animals, and burned fences litter the area. Ellen sees farmers rebuilding, a motif of hope for the future.
Midpoint (Pages 45-50)
Ellen and Sammy reach Alexandria. Most of it had been burned during the war and is nothing but charred ruins. She finds the nursing home and is reunited with Aaron. Veterans carry Aaron out in a chair and place him in the bed in the back of the wagon. As Ellen, Aaron, and Sammy leave the city, ominous crows fly overhead.
The group has not traveled far when a lone highwayman tries to steal Sammy’s horse. Ellen shoots him in the shoulder and leaves him in the road.
Obstacles (Pages 50-65)
The rough roads reinjure Aaron’s leg. It becomes infected, turning red. The travelers have to stop at a doctor’s house. Here Aaron’s leg is treated with warm baths, poultices, healing salves, and even maggots to eat the dead flesh away when it turns gangrenous. This would be a cinematic look at an overlooked aspect of The War Between the States – the men who had to live the rest of their lives with devastating wounds and the effect it had upon their families. Many historians believe the true casualty amount of the war is not the commonly held 600,000 Americans but 800,000 due to the men who would die in the coming years from complications due to their wounds. Whiskey Chitto Woman would be an opportunity to honor the wounded on both sides and their families.
While Aaron recuperates, Sammy and Leop go off on their adventures. Leop chases a raccoon up a tree, out onto a limb, and crashes into a creek with the creature in mortal combat. Sammy goes to a revival meeting at a brush arbor to meet girls and ends up learning some lessons about human nature.
Rising Obstacles (Pages 65-75)
Aaron recovers and the group continues their journey. They especially want to get away from the doctor’s house because the highwayman that Ellen shot earlier has been brought in by his friends for the bullet to be extracted from his shoulder.
The group is joined by freed slaves Cora and Naz, and Alabamian refugees, Pete and Stella, who are heading toward Texas. Pete and Stella have a sorrowful story about how their good horses were stolen, leaving them with lame ones. Aaron can empathize because he wonders if he will ever be able to plow again. In an agrarian society, he’s a lame horse himself.
Then there’s a major shootout between the travelers and the highwaymen. Cora and Naz assert their freedom by taking part in the gunbattle. It is cathartic for Peter and Stella who will not let their horses be stolen again. Everyone takes part in the fight except for Aaron who remains bedridden in the wagon, crying at his helplessness.
ACT III
(Climax and Resolution, Pages 75-80)
The travelers make it home to Cherrywinche Creek. Relatives and friends set out a meal for Ellen and Aaron. Poppa John prays over the food. During the meal, Aaron looks around at the food that he will never again be able to plant and help harvest. He takes his crutches and heads out to the woods. Ellen follows him.
She finds him dragging a log. He says he plans to whittle himself a wooden leg. Ellen begins helping him. And that’s how a movie based on Whiskey Chitto Woman should end. Not with the tragedy of Cold Mountain, but with a couple looking to each other for strength as they face the future.
Closing Thoughts
While Whiskey Chitto Woman might not be a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel or a New York Times bestseller, there are a lot of great themes and depth in Hudson’s work that stand out with a second and third reading that could be explored in a film. On its face, it’s a simple journey through outlaw territory. But it’s also a spiritual and emotional journey packed with themes including determination, surviving and overcoming hardships, healing from trauma, hope, love, community, the effects of war on a civilian population, and the place of women and the disabled in Victorian America.
I would like to see Ellen’s journey as a film because it could showcase an overlooked part of my home state. The pine forest and rocky hills of western Louisiana have more in common with Kaibab National Forest out in Arizona or the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains than with the cypress-lined bayous typically associated with the Pelican State. The parishes that Ellen’s journey takes her through – Vernon, Beauregard, Allen, and Rapides – though rich in history, have been underserved by both the economy and the state government and still have plenty of “wilderness,” like the Vernon Unit and Calcasieu Ranger District of Kisatchie National Forest, West Bay Wildlife Management Area, Palustris Experimental Forest Longleaf Tract. Arriflex and Arricam cameras – see Hostiles, The Way, The Lost City of Z, The Tree of Life, Nomadland, Old Henry for a lookbook reference – could capture the natural beauty of the changing landscape along Ellen’s odyssey. This in turn would inspire both local pride and tourist interest to boost the economy and preserve local history and nature.
Another reason I would like to see Ellen and Aaron’s story turned into a film is more personal. I did not know this when I first read Whiskey Chitto Woman, but Ellen and Aaron are my great-great-great uncle and aunt. While doing some research into my family history I learned that Aarron was brother to my great-great grandfather, John Jackson “Jack” Johnson. That means “Poppa” John L. “Saddler” Johnson was my great-great-great grandfather. To honor and preserve the pioneer spirit and grit of my ancestors, my family is one reason I think that Whiskey Chitto Woman should be a Western.
Because It Is A Powerful Spiritual And Emotional Journey That Honors The Pioneer Spirit and Grit of My Ancestors Is Why Believe That Whiskey Chitto Woman by Marguerite Hudson Should Be A Western Movie Filmed in Louisiana.
