OP was cool enough to talk more and even tried reaching out to multiple mods for verification but nobody answered back, soooo..it wasn't his fault nobody jumped in to verify him. lol
Just because it takes place before RDR doesn't mean it'd be a prequel for John Marston. RDR didn't continue any of the story or feature characters from Red Dead Revolver and the GTA games have never retained the same protagonist from game to game.
As I mentioned in the map thread, if you take a closer look at the regions they seem to be going for it looks like the southern territories could mimic Louisiana, so it makes me wonder if they'd tackle slavery or the plantations? Maybe Dan Houser was a fan of Django Unchained?
The north of map seems to be like the Dakota territories which for TV folks Deadwood was set up at and of course the Sioux Wars took place in this region and the Black Hills. This becomes a little more interesting now based on this nugget from this quote....
Take this with a grain of salt too...
I have a good friend that is a stuntman living in NYC. Has done work on Daredevil season 2 and Blindspot. He told me he met a guy who said he has been doing some mo-cap work for the game. Also confirmed that the game takes place before RDR and that he was doing mo-cap for a character who is half-Indian half-white. Never stated if he was the main character/characters or not though.
I'm sure we will hear about this game sometime this summer.
The Dakoto territories was where Hugh Glass became a bit of the legend, source for the Leo movie "The Revenant", with the bear attack too. He actually lived with the Sioux at one point when he was captured. Then again he was also a pirate too according to his own self described legend. lol