I think to an extent my creation of Peacie may have been inspired by Ed Chigliak of Northern Exposure, but I don't know that there's actually much similarity between the characters. He could have been inspired by any number of things, including another cliche of having a token Indian character in Westerns, like Cloud Dancing in Dr. Quinn, or even Tonto, sidekick of the Lone Ranger. I dunno. His first name is supposed to sound like "P.C.," or "politically correct," though I think that term was fairly new, in the popular lexicon, when I made up the series, and wouldn't have existed in Peacie's time. But a secondary meaning for the name is simply that he sort of represents the fact that there's peace between the townsfolk and the local Indians. (Btw, one anachronism I've resisted is calling them Native Americans; I prefer, for the purposes of this series, to go with the term "Indians," which would have been used at the time.) As for his last name, it clearly refers to the fact that he is a token character (except that he's actually important to the story), and I named him that tongue-in-cheek, but I want to stress that I made up the name like a few years or so before South Park even premiered, so I'm not ripping off their character, Token.


D'WARD's 1890's