Kehetu was the chief of a Comanche band on the northern Great Plains in 1719, played by Julian Black Antelope in Prey. He led the camp that included Naru, her older brother Taabe, and their mother Aruka. After Taabe brought a mountain lion home, Kehetu made him war chief. When Naru later came back from her fight with the Feral Predator, she stood before Kehetu with its head and Raphael Adolini's flintlock, warned the band that danger was nearby, and told them to move to easier protected ground. He survived that hunt.
Biography
Leader Of The Band
Kehetu was the chief of the Comanche band that Naru and Taabe belonged to on the northern Great Plains in 1719. The camp lived in lodges on open grass, and its hunters tracked game, brought meat home, and watched the country around the ridgeline. Aruka was Naru and Taabe's mother in that same camp. The people of the band already spoke of Kehetu as war chief before the mountain lion hunt, and they looked to him when a hunt was finished and when the camp itself had to move.
In the lodges, Naru and Aruka talked about medicine for the war chief's bad knee, and Aruka said he was getting worse. Naru had left orange totsiyaa out of the mix, and Aruka asked who had taught her about that plant. That talk puts Kehetu's health inside the camp's daily work, even though the scene stays with Naru and her mother. The band still treated him as its leader, and that standing is what later lets him name a new war chief after the lion is brought home.
Naming Taabe War Chief
A mountain lion took a hunter from the band, and Naru went after it with the men. Taabe finished the cat and brought the body home at night, and the camp gathered around the fire to receive him. Kehetu came forward in ceremonial dress, a horned war bonnet on his head and a feathered staff in his hand. He stood with Taabe in the firelight and made him war chief after that hunt. The naming is the clearest look the film gives of Kehetu as the band's leader, in the full dress of that office.
After the ceremony, Naru went to the new war chief and asked to go back out, far beyond the ridgeline. She had seen lightning in the trees, and she did not believe the lion was the only threat left on that ground. When she asked, "Do I need your permission, War Chief?", she was speaking to Taabe, not to Kehetu. Kehetu's part in that night was the naming itself. The argument that followed belonged to the brother and sister, and to the hunt Naru still wanted to keep.
Naru's Return
Naru later killed the Feral Predator, painted her face with its glowing blood, and walked back into camp with its head and Adolini's flintlock. Kehetu stood in the dusk with a woman of the band beside him, and he held the flintlock as Naru came before him. Aruka watched with him while the rest of the camp gathered. Naru told them there was danger nearby, and that they needed to move to easier protected ground. The village took in the head and the paint together, and the camp made her war chief.
Kehetu did not fight the Feral Predator himself, but he was still the chief of the camp that lived through that visit. He survived the hunt, as did Aruka and the people Naru had warned to move. Adolini's flintlock remained in the village when three Predator ships appeared over the camp in the film's end-credit pictures. That pistol later ended up in the hands of the Greyback Predator at the close of Predator 2, after a human had killed a hunter. The chief who first received it from Naru was still alive when those ships arrived.
Weapons And Equipment
Kehetu's most visible equipment in the film is ceremonial rather than a hunter's kit. At the lion-return fire he wears a horned war bonnet, a bone hair-pipe breastplate, and painted hide, and he carries a staff hung with feathers and fur. That staff is in his hand again when Naru stands before him at dusk, after the Feral Predator is dead. He also receives Raphael Adolini's flintlock when Naru brings it home, a trophy of her hunt rather than a weapon he carries into a fight of his own. The finished film never shows him in a direct fight with that hunter.
Behind The Scenes
Julian Black Antelope, a Calgary actor, played Kehetu in Prey. He later said the part was smaller than what was shot, and that a Chief Kehetu storyline was cut so the film could stay on Naru. In that unused thread, he said, Kehetu was dying and crippled, looking for a successor, and kept his attention on the men, including a plot with Wasape, played by Stormee Kipp, and never considered a woman. He hoped those scenes might appear in a longer cut, and said the choice to focus on Naru was understandable. The finished film leaves only the knee mentioned in camp, the naming of Taabe, and Naru's return.
Black Antelope also spoke about working with Comanche producer Jhane Myers, and about how unusual it was to have an Indigenous producer in that position of authority on a large film. Dan Trachtenberg directed Prey from a screenplay by Patrick Aison, from a story they shared, based on characters created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. The production still of Kehetu in the horned bonnet, bone breastplate, and staff was taken by David Bukach for 20th Century Studios. Prey was released on Hulu in the United States on 5 August 2022, with a Comanche-language version issued beside the English cut. Stefany Mathias is credited as Sumu, the chief's wife.
Conclusion
Kehetu was the Comanche chief who named Taabe war chief after the mountain lion hunt and who received Naru when she came home with the Feral Predator's head. He did not fight that hunter himself, but he remained the leader of the camp that survived the visit. The flintlock Naru placed in his hands stayed with the band, and he was still alive, with Aruka and the rest of the village, when the hunt was over in 1719. The acts the film does show, the naming and the receiving, are the acts of a chief.
Appearances
- Prey (2022)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore | Historical Predator Hunts | Predator Hunt Survivors
