The true story of a seven-year old boy who is kidnapped by Huron hunters, traded to other tribes and spends thirty-four years with tribes in Russian America and northwestern Canada before returning to Ohio to search for his birth family.

SYNOPSIS:

Don't think that this story is a sequel to "Dances With Wolves". It's not. "Matthew Lost" is an original and true story that is highly relate-able to today's world with so many children being kidnapped and held for weeks, months or even years. Not the thirty-four years that Matthew experienced, of course, and although Matthew found his family, the ending is poignant and tragic that will touch every heart in the theater.

The logline, synopsis and completed script available now.

"Matthew Lost" is based on John H.A. Bone's "The Indian Captive"?, 1860, and Richard Welch's "?In Tribute to Matthew", 2009.

What follows is a thirty-four year odyssey by a shy, young farm boy to the Great Plains, to the Pacific Coast as the protagonist, young MATTHEW BRAYTON, is traded from one tribe to another. He eventually ends with tribes in northwestern Canada and Russian America.

The story tells of battles with other tribes, sneaking past war-like tribes to follow the buffalo herds into Canada, near starvation save the occasional deer and caribou flavored with bark of trees and various bits of roots and moss that they manage to gather during the winters in northern Canada. Matthew eventually settles with the Yellowknives “Copper Indians” on the north shore of Great Slave Lake that actively trades with the Russians. Later he is traded to the Cree where he marries and has two children.

Matthew is at a trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company when the post’s agent recognizes him as being White, a recognition that shocks Matthew to his very core. His tribe spirits him away from the post and uses several methods of tattooing and marking his body to disguise the facts of his ethnicity, including carving trenches and peeling off strips of skin from his chest.

The die, however, is cast and Matthew becomes determined to find the truth of his heritage, even though it means abandoning his Indian wife, TEFRONIA, and children and trekking more than one thousand miles from Yukon to Chicago where his escorts abandon him and he travels with his half-wolf companion, NAWAH, to find his birth family in Ohio.

Upon arriving in Ohio, he meets many people who help him in his search and a Cleveland newspaper chronicles his movements in daily editions that intrigue and fascinate its thousands of readers from Pennsylvania to Michigan and beyond. A question begins to grow. Is this really Matthew Brayton or a fraud who wants only money? How would anyone know?

Matthew befriends the operator of a panorama who has collected materials from the Polar Esquimaux and the newspaper publisher begins a series of articles that eventually become the basis for a book in 1860 about Matthew’s adventures. But the book only raises more questions. Is he a fraud? Is the book nothing but political lies aimed at furthering a political, anti-war, movement? Who is this man claiming to be Matthew Brayton?

Matthew traverses northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania for several weeks until his brother, WILLIAM, who had lost Matthew some thirty-four years earlier, was able to catch up to him. William is told by his father how Matthew could easily be recognized and William is quickly aboard a train to find the wanderer who is by then in Pennsylvania.

What a glorious reunion when William casts his eyes on Matthew for the first time in thirty-four years and confirms his identity based on their father’s description. Crowds of people line the railroad tracks as the train rolls through northern Ohio with the long-lost Matthew eagerly awaiting a reunion with his father and siblings he had left behind all those years earlier. Matthew is confirmed by some boyhood friends, his father, and other relatives and he is welcomed back into the family, but there are problems.

Matthew is first accepted as their long-lost brother, but William begins to turn against him. Is William overcome by guilt, or do Matthew’s actions turn William into a bitter older brother? Thirty-plus years made Matthew a “savage” in the eyes of his siblings who by then are wealthy and socially prominent farmers. His eating habits are disgusting. His ever-present half-wolf terrorizes the women-folk. Perhaps he is attracted by his brother’s wives? His English is rough and barely understood, but mostly the family is ashamed to admit him back into their inner circle.

Rejected by his brother William, Matthew returns to the Pottawatomie in southern Michigan who were among the first tribes to trade him back in the 1820s. Totally dejected, Matthew soon enlists in the Michigan Cavalry to attempt to redeem himself in William’s eyes, but within weeks, Matthew is dead, a victim of the many diseases that ran rampant through the ranks of Federal soldiers.

Richard Welch

131 E. La Espina

Green Valley, Arizona 85614

(520) 977-3071

Richard-welch@msn.com

Copyright © 2015 Richard Welch