"In Kelly Reichardt's much-lauded new film Meek's Cutoff, set in 1845, a small band of pioneers get lost in barren, arid plains on their way to the Willamette Valley. Eventually, they grow disillusioned with their blustery guide, Stephen Meek (who is based on a historical figure who led a notoriously ill-fated wagon train). At one point, the settlers capture a Native American man and, despite the fact that they cannot understand his words, warily decide to let him lead them, hoping that he will take them to the water they so desperately need.

In the film, the dialogue spoken by the Native American man (played by Rod Rondeaux and listed as "the Indian" in the credits and "the Cayuse" on the movie's website) isn't subtitled. So throughout the film, the pioneers—and the viewer—remain in the dark as to his motivations. When asked about the decision not to subtitle the Indian's dialogue, Reichardt told T Magazine, "I didn't want to give the audience any information that the immigrants didn't have." She wouldn't translate the lines for the interviewer, saying, "It's for you to read him in the other ways that we have to read people that are culturally different."

According to linguist Phillip Cash Cash, there are only about three people in the world who speak downriver Nez Perce, the language a Cayuse of the time would most likely have spoken. (According to Cash Cash, there are fewer than 30 living speakers of upriver Nez Perce, a mutually intelligible dialect.) Most moviegoers will indeed be every bit as confounded by the Indian's words as the settlers in the film are."

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What's the Native American Man Saying in "Meek's Cutoff"? (Slate 4/18)