Native American Popular Culture and Race

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Native American Popular Culture and Race

EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE

NATIVE AMERICANS IN FILM

NATIVE AMERICAN FILMMAKERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Native Americans have been historically represented in American popular culture as fitting into one of two categories, either the noble savage or bloodthirsty savage. Robert Berkhofer, in The White Man’s Indian (1978), traces these categories as far back as Columbus’s journals. Other scholars credit American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) with solidifying these categories in his Leatherstocking Tales (1823–1841). Both categories represent racist attitudes toward Native Americans because both construct a deficient model attributed to race. The bloodthirsty savage is violent and aggressive, animalistic in nature, and a constant threat to the dominant culture; therefore, violent action in retaliation is justified. The noble savage is friendly to Europeans and Americans and inherently wise but must ultimately vanish in the face of progress. The “Indian Princess” is the female version of the noble savage and was a popular icon in early American popular culture, becoming the subject of poems, plays, art, and later film. All of these represent models to which the dominant culture compared itself to validate its perceived superiority based on race.

EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE

Captivity narratives are considered one of the first popular American literatures. These stories were written primarily in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by colonists who were taken captive by various Native American nations in the region. While the taking of captives had been practiced by both Native Americans and colonists alike, the phrase generally refers to the stories written by colonists “rescued” from Native American captivity and returned to their colonial villages. In the early stories, the Native Americans might be noble or savage, but in later versions bloodthirsty savages dominated as editors embellished the stories to add more drama. The underlying threat of miscegenation (the mixing of two different races) and the perceived threat of rape kept audiences on the edge of their seats. Taboos against miscegenation would continue well into early Hollywood film, as would the general theme of captivity, becoming a recognizable formula in the Hollywood western.

The western as a specific genre of literature and film followed logically from the frontier novels of Cooper, whose works are thought to have influenced everything from the extremely popular dime novels of the late 1800s to American films. Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales featured both bloodthirsty and noble savages, as demonstrated in his most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). While many critics thought Cooper overly romanticized Native Americans, others claimed the bloodthirsty savages ultimately outnumbered the noble savages in his works. The bloodthirsty savage became a major figure in a continuing literary form, the dime novel.

Dime novels were fast paced, formulaic, serialized novels that featured heroic cowboys and savage Indians. Playing to the public’s interest in westward expansion, the gold rush, and the Oregon Trail, these novels featured action-packed conflict between cowboys and Indians and glorified American heroes such as Buffalo Bill Cody (1846–1917). First published by Irwin P. Beadle & Company in 1860, these stories portrayed Native Americans largely as bloodthirsty and ignorant, speaking in grunts and broken English, thus validating the ideology of westward expansion and dismissing its devastating impact on Native Americans. The “Indians” in these stories were characterized as barely human, so their defeat by the hero was cause for celebration, not concern. This was also true of the later stage shows created by Buffalo Bill, the star of many dime novels.

Buffalo Bill Cody was an actual frontiersman and scout in the U.S. military. In 1883 Cody took advantage of his popularity with American audiences and created Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, a traveling show that featured reenactments of western adventures, including conflicts between Native Americans and white Americans heading west. The show borrowed from the stage, vaudeville, and the circus in an effort to re-create the Old West for those who could only dream of such adventures. These included both American and European audiences, including European kings and queens who sometimes participated in the shows. The Wild West further cemented the theme of “cowboys and Indians” in the American imagination, and these live shows later became the subject matter of early American films.

NATIVE AMERICANS IN FILM

A Native American presence in film is as old as American film itself. Yet the filmic “Indian” is rarely a developed, complex character. Tribal specificity and cultural and historical accuracy seem not to have been a concern for the majority of filmmakers. When Thomas Edison premiered his kinetoscope at the Chicago Colombian World’s Exposition in 1893, he showed Hopi Snake Dance, an “actuality” or ethnographic film displaying the “exotic cultures” of the newly defeated Native Americans. Despite the terms “actuality” and “ethnographic,” these films were not historically or ethnographically accurate. They were one-sided interpretations of Native American culture that continued the Eurocentric tradition of presenting Native Americans as other and lesser. The premier of the film Parade of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (1894) launched the beginning of the most popular film genre: the western.

The western is the most common location to find Native Americans, or more accurately “Hollywood Indians.” The Hollywood Indian belongs to a fictional group that lacks tribal specificity. For example, one of the most famous directors of westerns was John Ford. His films often featured the iconic actor John Wayne and portrayed Native Americans as generic tribes. They might be called Cheyenne or Comanche, but often the extras were played by Navajos in Navajo clothing speaking Navajo. Ford did not concern himself with historical accuracy and assumed that the audience would not either. These kinds of films contributed to a historically inaccurate mythology that persists despite later efforts to address it.

In the 1950s, the sympathetic western made its debut with Broken Arrow (1950) staring Jimmy Stewart. This film addressed the impact of westward expansion on Native Americans but still fell into the familiar traps of utilizing the noble savage as part of its formula. In particular, Stewart’s wife is an Indian Princess who reinforces the stereotype of the vanishing American when she dies tragically but romantically, implying that the two races cannot coexist. Later films take the sympathetic western one step further, creating what are known as revisionist westerns. These westerns seek to revise the classic western often by inverting the classical elements. For example, in the revisionist western the Native Americans are the moral characters and the townspeople or settlers are amoral and westward expansion is viewed in light of its negative impact on Native Americans. The film Little Big Man (1970) is an example of this. The Cheyenne call themselves the “human beings,” and protagonist Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), when given the choice of whether to live as a “white man” or a Cheyenne, ultimately chooses the Cheyenne. They are clearly the superior people in the film. Or are they? Ultimately, they must, like all noble savages, vanish. In an eloquent speech to Jack Crabb the Cheyenne chief Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George) says, “There has always been a limited number of human beings but there is an endless supply of white men.. . . We won today, we won’t win tomorrow,” thus validating the audience’s understanding that Indians—a defeated people—belong to the past.

In terms of historical accuracy, some later westerns tried to be more culturally sensitive. After a long dry spell in Hollywood the western resurfaced with Kevin Costner’s Oscar Academy Award-winning Dances with Wolves (1990). As a film that billed itself as historically accurate, Dances did make some breakthroughs. The Sioux characters speak Sioux, and numerous Native American consultants were on the set. Still, the film heavily romanticizes the Sioux as noble and casts the Pawnee as bloodthirsty, failing to escape the formulas of the past. The film also continues to promote the notion of the vanishing race, ending with the eventual capture of the Sioux community by the cavalry.

NATIVE AMERICAN FILMMAKERS

Native American filmmakers have tried to address this history by making films about contemporary Native Americans, proving that Native Americans have not vanished and are not defeated. Sandra Osawa (Makah) has been involved in film and television since the 1960s, and her films Lighting the Seventh Fire (1995) and On and Off the Res’ with Charlie Hill (1999) show Native American people dealing with contemporary issues. On and Off the Res’ is especially interesting regarding the topic of film and media because it documents the career of stand-up comedian Charlie Hill, an Oneida who addresses Hollywood stereotypes in his comedy sketches. Victor Masayesva Jr. (Hopi) directly attacks both Hollywood stereotypes and the movie industry in his documentary Imagining Indians (1992), which looks at the history of Native American people’s participation in Hollywood films and the way the industry has exploited Native American people and communities. The most prolific Native American feature filmmaker of the late 1990s and early 2000s is Cheyenne/Arapaho director and producer Chris Eyre. His films feature present-day urban and reservation Native Americans dealing with contemporary life.

Racist depictions of Native Americans in American popular culture are so entrenched that it is often difficult to escape them, but Native American filmmakers are making an effort, as are other independent filmmakers. Ideally, a more human depiction of Native Americans will become prevalent over time, replacing the simplified stereotypes of noble and bloodthirsty savage with images of complex human beings.

SEE ALSO “Playing Indian”; White Settler Society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benshoff, Harry M., and Sean Griffin. 2004. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr. 1978. The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: Vintage.

Kilpatrick, Jacquelyn. 1999. Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Rollins, Peter C., and John E. O’Connor, eds. 1998. Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Singer, Beverly R. 2001. Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Angelica Lawson

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