The Tribe (Season 1, Episode 16)
Premise: When college students are tortured and killed on former Apache land in New Mexico, the BAU looks past the reservation to a cult bent on a race war.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 16
- Unsub
- Jackson Cally, “Grandfather” (Chad Allen)
- Location
- Terra Mesa, New Mexico
- Starring
- Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness)
- Opening quote
- “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “You can take many paths to get to the same place.” (Apache saying, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Gregory Cruz as John Blackwolf, Eric Johnson as Sean Hotchner, Robert Curtis Brown as Peter Greisen, Skyler Shaye as Ingrid Greisen, Chris Ellis as Sheriff Rhodes
- Director
- Matt Earl Beesley
- Writers
- Andrew Wilder
Summary
The Case
“The Tribe” finds five university students tortured and killed at an unfinished house in a new development in Terra Mesa, New Mexico. They were skinned alive, and the BAU decides a pack did it. The killings mimic Native American war rituals, and the development sits on land the town took from the Apache, who are fighting the seizure in court. A third sleeping bag suggests a sixth young person, a girl, is missing. The team turns to John Blackwolf, the reservation’s police officer. Walking the scene, Blackwolf says the rituals come from many tribes, so no real Indian did this, and the tracks show at least eight people, two of whom carried off a young woman.
Suspecting someone wants the Apache blamed, the team questions Roy Minton, founder of an armed group hostile to the tribe, and has him watched. A print identifies the missing girl as Ingrid Greisen. Her father, Peter, makes a TV plea, but the two men holding her then contact the FBI and surrender with her: Eugene Leland and Kyle Van Owen say Greisen paid them to grab her just before the killings. Like a captured soldier, Ingrid gives nothing but her name and Social Security number, and Greisen admits she had joined a cult and he hired the men to pull her out. When a family of five is slaughtered the same way at Minton’s home, Blackwolf confronts Ingrid at the scene; she speaks of a leader called “Grandfather” and lets slip that the group lives in the Deadlands.
The team identifies Jackson Cally, expelled from Terra Mesa University over peyote and mescaline, who took a seminar with Ingrid that Blackwolf guest lectures in. Agents arrest Cally alone at an abandoned motel in the Deadlands; his followers are out “hunting.” Hotch gives him an audience, but Blackwolf’s taunts expose Cally as a racist. With guns missing from Minton’s house, the team realizes Cally wants to start a race war by staging an attack by white men on the reservation, likely at its school.
The Team
Hotch’s younger brother, Sean, drops by the BAU to say he is skipping Georgetown law school for a restaurant job in New York. Hotch, a lawyer like their father, who died of a heart attack at 47, pushes him to reconsider until Sean tells him not to profile him. Later Hotch visits Sean at work, gives him a contact in the FBI’s New York office, calls himself a jackass and tells Sean to do it his own way.
The ending
Spoiler: The children are out of the school before the followers arrive, and the team and Blackwolf catch them there, four without a shot fired; one more is shot and another is badly cut.
Why it stands out
- Eric Johnson is introduced as Hotch’s younger brother, Sean; it is Sean’s only known visit to Hotch’s office, and most of the team had no idea he existed.
- Chad Allen, who plays cult leader Jackson Cally, and Gregory Cruz, who plays John Blackwolf, had worked together before on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.