STORY BY RENNARD STRICKLAND Ph.D
The media—radio, television, film—is powerful. The messages dominate our thinking, particularly when the viewer has little or no opportunity for firsthand observation. How many Americans see "Indians" anywhere but on the screen? And either way, who is able to distinguish fact from fiction? There is a story told about the shooting in Monument Valley of one of the epic Westerns directed by the renowned John Ford. The cameras stop. The Navajo actors dismount and take off their Sioux war bonnets. One of the film crew says to the Indians, "That was wonderful, you did it just right." An Indian actor replies, "Yeah, we did it just like we saw it in the movies."
Movie Star Coyote, Harry Fonseca (Maidu), 1982.
Without question,
the American view of the "Indian" is
"just like we saw it in the movies."
What would we think the Native American was like if we had only the celluloid Indian from which to reconstruct history; if our data came exclusively from motion picture archives? On one had we would see the noble "Red Man," the faithful Tonto-like companion. On the other side we would see the "Indian" as a savage pillager. We would see his primary occupation as plunder; his principal recreation as overpowering and torturing the innocent, particularly women and children. We would see him as the devil incarnate, as strange, romantic, dangerous, and deceptive; as a virile barbarian. Paradoxically, the Savage Sinner portrayal is contrasted with the Native American as a misunderstood but well-meaning child, or as a Tonto figure, serving his white master in the preordained task of westward expansion—the savage giving up his life for a new and better world for us all. Another image shows the "Indian" as the first ecologist, crying over our destruction of the Universe, or an all-knowing woodsy Christ figure: the red-skinned redeemer.
Like most screen comics, silent star Harold Lloyd could not miss the chance to play a farcical Indian as in Heap Big Chief (1919). In slapstick and romantic comedies, the cinema Indians were absurdly portrayed. Courtesy author's collection.
If Native American ethnography were based only on the Hollywood studios' presentation, we would believe that the Apaches were the largest tribe in the United States.
We would think, if we relied on "Indian films," that there were no tribes east of the Mississippi except perhaps the Mohawk, and that North America was unoccupied through the entire Great Lakes and central region but for an occasional savage remnant—perhaps a stray Yaqui or two who had wandered in from the Southwest. We almost never have a Pueblo Indian or Hopi on the screen. Real danger comes from the Plains: the Cheyenne, the Kiowa and, of course, there are the Comanche who, according to screen legend, "killed more whites than any tribe of history."
Better known for his sepia-toned still shots, Edward A. Curtis pioneered cinematography of Native Americans. With Curtis operating the camera, the Kwakiutl "actors" begin a scene from In the Land of the Head-Hunters on location in the Pacific Northwest. Circa 1914. Photo by Edmund Schwinke. Courtesy Burke Museum, University of Washington.
In addition, movies would inculcate a bizarre sense of geography and Native American cultures. We would see the Florida Everglades-dwelling-Seminoles battling U.S. Army cavalry on desert buttes, as well as Oglala Sioux of the Great Plains fighting their way through infested tropical swamps and Spanish moss. The high-fashion film "Indians" in Captain John Smith and Pocahontas (1953) appear for us in velveteen and rickrack in a kind of mod-proto-Spanish G-string. Native American dress is almost never accurate. Film Mohawks of the northeast can be seen wearing Navajo blankets—a mid-nineteenth century southwestern garment-as early as the American Revolution!
If our knowledge of Native Americans were indeed limited to film information, there would appear to be few if any living Native Americans. "Indian films" are almost always set in earlier historic times, mostly the eighteenth or late nineteenth century. With few exceptions, the Indian of the movies is the Indian of the frontier wars—one of a dying people, or at least on the road to disappearance.
Richard Dix portrays Wing Foot, the noble hero in Redskin, a 1929 silent epic of an eastern educated Navajo, expelled from his tribe, discovers oil, stops a Pueblo attack and marries Corn Blossom, his beloved sweetheart from a rival warring tribe. Courtesy author's collection.
These sinister portrayals and historic distortions date from the very beginning of the motion picture industry.
Film gave light and motion to longstanding images of deeply entrenched stereotypes. The Indian in film is rooted in almost five-hundred years of white portrayals of Native Americans. The screen Indian is, with few exceptions, directly out of the Indian captivity, travel and exploration narratives and such stalwart literary traditions as James Fenimore Cooper and the dime novel. Movie-makers took the advertising posters off the barroom wall and flickered them through the nickelodeon. Gruesome and heroic images inspired by the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Co.'s "Custer's Last Stand" advertising poster (1896) were seen again and again in climaxes to the many screen versions of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
In 1982, the Maidu Indian artist, Harry Fonseca, created in a painting, "Movie Star Coyote." This work presents a rich distillation of the bizarre relationship between Hollywood and the American Indian. Fonseca's trademark Coyote—a contemporary Indian character with many witty aspects in the artist's current work-prances here before a pueblo, the sky bright with theatrical searchlights.
The film Indian symbolized and parodied by Fonseca's bedecked and dancing Coyote is a significant image for Native Americans.
Why should we be concerned that the Indian of the mass media is someone or something the Native American is not? If it is nothing more than a night's adventure or a laugh or two, who cares? Howdy Doody's Princess Summerfall Winterspring meant well, and his Chief Thunderthud never said anything but "Kowabunga." After all, it is only radio or television or the movies! But the cinema "Red Man" transcends entertainment—for this media stereotype profoundly affects both contemporary American Indian policy and Native American self-image.
The film Indian is pervasive. No Indian reservation is too distant, no native community too traditional to escape the impact of the movie stereotypes. The ramifications of motion pictures—social and cultural—are everywhere. Indian-authored tales tell of childhoods spent playing cowboy and resenting that the Indians never seem to win. The effect of film can be seen from the smallest details of a child's everyday game of "cowboys and Indians" to the international arena where the movie star President of the United States gives Hollywood-rooted answers to Soviet student's questions about Native Americans.
It is the repetitive regularity of the image in movies that refines and reinforces the societal stereotypes. Hollywood provides an endless parade in which we have "good Indians and bad Indians." In the thousands of individual films and the millions of frames in those films, we have few, if any, "real Indians" who have individuality or humanity; who have families; who lead real lives that differ in marked degree from the lives of other "Indians." Hollywood has tried to squeeze all of these people into these two basic molds. Almost five hundred tribes, bands, and villages are thus reduced to the homogenized film Indian stereotypes.
Of all the "Indian figures" in the history of film, the most widely known is Tonto. So, "come with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear," as we tune in to the familiar strains of the William Tell overture, which signal that the daring and resourceful masked rider of the Plains and his faithful "Indian" companion Tonto are just one commercial away from the night's adventure.
Tonto, the Lone Ranger's "faithful Indian companion," is the most widely recognized media Native American, symbolizing the good and the noble helper, descendant of the corn bearing "Red Man" of Thanksgiving mythology.
Today, the Lone Ranger and Tonto seem mythic, ageless—part of a feudal past. In truth, they go back only to radio's pioneer days, having premiered on Detroit's WXYZ on January 30, 1933, and lasted on radio until 1954, with another 180 episodes on television, and rebirth in a couple of feature-length films.
Tonto is the very model of the screen's faithful "Indian" companion, smarter than Steppin' Fetchit and almost as clever as Charlie Chan without being inclined to spout so much ancient wisdom. Faithful companions, like other ethnic stereotypes, come in all shapes and sizes. Tonto represents the Native American as a good and noble helper, descendant of the cornbearing Red Man in grade-school Thanksgiving pageants. There are others-where would Red Ryder be without Little Beaver? Or Pa Kettle without the faithful Crowbar and Geoduck?
The reality of the contemporary Native American's world is very different from the life ascribed to Tonto or to the menacing savage. As the British lawyer and poet, A.P. Herbert, wrote, "Life ain't like in the movies."
The death scene of Henry Fonda's Colonel in John Ford's Fort Apache (1948) transferred a Budweiser beerhall sign into cinematic confrontations. The film industry did not significantly change the Native American image but brought live action to the old stereotypes.
We know, for example, that Native Americans are far from vanishing. The rates of population increase among Native Americans is significantly higher than the national average. On the 1980 census rolls, more than a million and a half people declared themselves to be Native Americans. Half of the Native American population is under twenty-one years of age. Native Americans are alive and well. They are not on the road to disappearance but in fact, are the fastest growing minority group in the United States.
If there is one constant in the history of this group's screen portrayal, it is that rarely was the "Indian" an Indian. Today, however, the Native American is making a concentrated assault on film and filmmaking, responding to almost a century of Hollywood Indians. Talented and aggressive Native American filmmakers are producing film and videos that portray Native Americans in real-world situations, using "real Indians" to play realistic parts. The Native American is very much alive in the film industry. Coyote has come to Hollywood and is making serious professional strides. The Native-American operated American Indian Registry of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles has published a new directory of Native American professionals in the performing arts. A handbook for non-Indian producers has also been published to locate Native Americans to work in Hollywood films and achieve an accurate portrayal of their peoples' lives as opposed to the cardboard-cutout characters and homogenized depictions of the past.
Dancing Indians first brought Busby Berkley's revolutionary cinematic choreography to the screen in Whoopee, Eddie Cantor's smash musical. Beautifully warbonneted Indian maidens parade through an exotic native number which is a precursor of later Berkley productions such as the dancing neon violins.
The reality for contemporary Native Americans working in motion pictures is that in the most recent film year there were only two major motion pictures about "Indians" under production, a far cry from hundreds produced in earlier years. Today, Native Americans who wish to portray their people accurately on the screen must create their own opportunities. And from New York City to Minneapolis to Tulsa to Tucson to Los Angeles, they are doing just that. For example, workshops are held on reservations to help tribes become involved in filmmaking. The Institute for American Indian Art in Santa Fe has begun to develop a film study curriculum. All across the country, Native Americans are beginning to seize the moment to reshape their cinematic image.
