I remember reading that “Dances with Wolves” was revolutionary because it humanized the Indians. They were no longer redskin savages whooping and hollering while attacking stagecoaches and wagon trains. Then the upstanding white soldiers would give them their comeuppance.
But I thought about some of the more famous Indian movies. “Little Big Man” was very sympathetic to the Indians, maybe moreso than Dances with Wolves. There was Fess Parker’s “Davy Crockett: Indian Fighter”. That title is a dead giveaway. But Davy was also sympathetic to the Indians, even telling Congress to stop taking their land and breaking treaties.
Then I watched “They Died with their Boots On,” which is almost legendary in elevating Custer’s status. Everyone knows how historically innaccurate it is, so I figured it was prime Injun-hating material. But even Errol Flynn’s character doesn’t despise the Indians, saying the government forced the Indians to defend their land and he doesn’t blame them at all for fighting for it.
Did I create too much a strawman with earlier Hollywood vs Dances with Wolves? Or am I missing more notorious examples?
To point to one where the Indians are portrayed badly, John Wayne in “The Searchers,” 1956, where mutilating the bodies of Cheyenne warriors is shown in a good light. Nasty movie…
In contrast, 1962’s “Geronimo” with Chuck Connors did its best to provide a slightly healthier balance.
Going way back, of course, you have Fennimore Cooper, who at least had the grace to portray both “good Indians and bad Indians,” the best of all being Uncas, the next-to-last of the Mohicans.
The thing about westerns (as I remember them) is that for a long time, Indians in movies didn’t even have speaking roles.
We rarely saw individual Indians in the older westerns. We saw them in groups, attacking a wagon train or a settler’s cabin, or fighting the cavalry. We listened to settlers and cowboys and the cavalry talk about the savage Indians, so even though we didn’t see much savagery, that was the general belief, the theme. Indians were always the enemy, but always part of a horde. You can’t humanize a horde.
So yeah, there was a time when Indians = savages, but that mostly ended by the 40’s.
I think the last movie that depicted Indians as savages was The Searchers. John Ford gave us rape and mutilation and murder and women captives driven insane. But the white people in that movie weren’t all that noble either, so there’s that.
Maybe a movie historian will pop in and tell us when things shifted. In all the westerns I remember, if an Indian had a speaking role, he was sympathetic. Except for Chief Scar. But he probably had a bad childhood.
There’s also the whole “noble savage” stereotype - they don’t necessarily have to be on the warpath or actively scalping people to still be presented as inferior and alien and constitutionally incapable of living up to the (better/socially acceptable) standards of white people.
Tonto is a great example there - it wasn’t that he was “savage” in a violent sense, it was that he was “a savage” and couldn’t be expected to speak in complete sentences or wear clothes or understand western civilization and the concepts of our justice systems and laws in any meaningful sense.
Still an offensive stereotype, just a less violent one.
Well, maybe. Been a while since I’ve seen it. I took it at a more surface level, without penetrating into the motivations. John Wayne = hero, so if he mutilates Indian corpses, it must be heroic. That he was playing a less-than-hero didn’t register. If you’re right, my apologies to the director.
Again, though, my quote was from the pre-Dances-With-Wolves movie where Tonto speaks in complete sentences and wears clothes, making well-phrased comments about judging a man not by the color of his skin and et cetera when a fellow clothed tribesman points out that “The white man has made many promises to us, yet they keep only one: they promised to take our land from us, and they took it. You see the suffering and the misery they bring to your people, yet you bring one to us to nurse back to health?”
(And, again, after they agree with his reply, the movie ends with President Grant saluting the clothed guy and agreeing with his perfectly-worded point about those treaties; as Tonto portrayals go, that’s a decidedly different Tonto.)
The Searchers was very loosely based on a true story. Cynthia Parker was kidnapped as a nine year old during a raid that killed most of her family. She had to watch many of her relatives being tortured to death. She was then taken away by the Comanches and lived with them for 24 years. She was found by a Texas ranger during a raid and lived unhappily back with her relatives until her death.
Most movies depicting Indians did not accurately depict the savagery of the Indian wars. Most raids would end with all the surviving male members tortured to death, and the women raped to death, while the children were forced to watch.
Just to clarify THE SEARCHERS: the Indians are certainly portrayed as savage, but with a real cause. The John Wayne character is portrayed as savage, without real cause except for bigotry. The course of the movie is that the Wayne character comes to realize that he is a relic of the past and no longer fits the changed world. The movie is about savagery on both sides, and condemns it. It is a very deep, very moving film.
The director, John Ford, often made movies that were sympathetic to the Indians, including CHEYENNE AUTUMN and SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON. He was an honourary member of the Navajo tribe, and whenever they were having a hard year, he’d bring out his crew and make a movie, providing employment and bringing money to the tribe. However, he made lots of westerns, and a movie without conflict/threat isn’t usually very interesting, and attacking Indians was a useful conflict/threat.
To pick upon what C.K. Dexter Haven said, check out John Ford’s Fort Apache.
It starred John Wayne and Henry Fonda, cast completely against type. Fonda was the hot-headed, bloodthirsty cavalry leader who wanted to wipe out the Apache. John Wayne played his calmer, more level-headed second-in-command, a man who understood and respected the Apache.
When the cavalry went into battle against the Apache, the audience was plainly supposed to sympathize with Cochise and Geronimo (introduced as “Jerome,” which is what his name meant in Spanish).
Broken Arrow from 1950 also shows a sympathetic look at Indians and is sometimes cited as the first Hollywood film to do so. Of course, Ford did it earlier, but the portrayals in his films were on the periphery; Broken Arrow brought it all to the fore.
Lots of older B westerns used Indians like post-WWII films used Nazis – all purpose villains. Savagery, however, was rarely portrayed. Just showing an Indian with maybe a threat to scalp was more than enough; you didn’t have to be graphic about it.
Two of my favorite movies, Fort Apache and The Searchers. I will say I disagree with you assessment of Henry Fonda in the movie. He was the opposite of hot-headed and bloodthirsty. He was cold-hearted and single minded. To him the mission meant everything. He was not driven to kill the Apaches but didn’t care if he had to so to keep them in line. He was unfeeling towards the Apache. But he was too stubborn to believe there could be a better way. He was Custer if Custer was competent. Not a bad man but cold, unemotional and stubborn.
I once heard Peter Fonda asked how his father was in real life. He responded, “Watch Fort Apache.”
Yes, the tribe Lieutenant Dunbar bonded with certainly were more thoughful and peace-loving but the Pawnee that Wes Studi led were as vicious and callous toward human life as most any represented over the years. It reminded me a lot of the movie Jeremiah Johnson where there are tribes that he can trade with, marry into and live peaceably with and then there are those that are much more warlike, the Comanche, Apache, etc.
Probably one of my favorite westerns to deal with the Indian plight is Ulzana’s Raid. As the tribes are systematically forced on to the reservations some lingering rebellion is inevitable and Ulzana’s men are given to pillage, rape and murder frontier settlers in a most brutal fashion. Like seen with Cato’s Land, they’re given to the practice of slowly torturing a victim with a campfire at their crotch. So fearful are soldiers of being captured by these Apaches they will kill white women and commit suicide themselves to avoid the miserable death. But many of the historical accounts I’ve read indicate that this was an accurate depiction of both sides in the struggle on the western frontier, again at least with the Comanche and a few others. In Ulzana’s Raid the young soldier and grizzled scout look at why Indians are given to such brutality and they must confront similar deep seated bigotry and cruelty they too feel rising within themselves.
I think it’s one of the most accurate of westerns and even if it deals with the most savage of behavior, it does so in a just and thought provoking manner.
One movie I don’t think has been mentioned yet is John Ford’s 1939 Stagecoach, about a group of characters traveling by…stagecoach. The movie is largely about the interactions between these characters, but a lot of the drama and action comes from the fact that the Apache are “on the warpath” and show up now and then to attack the white man’s stagecoaches and settlements.
IIRC the only Native American character in this movie who even has a speaking role is an Apache woman who is married to one of the secondary characters. He considers her presence insurance against attack by Apaches, but she winds up stealing some horses and running away.
The Searchers, which has already been mentioned, may be one of the first big Westerns to depict Native Americans as actually having reasons for attacking white settlers and not just doing so because it’s in their nature.
