Jessica Crabtree

Recently I had the opportunity of watching a lot of the old-fashioned tv westerns, ranging from black and white cowboy movies to classic long-running series. They reminded me how much has changed in the past half century or so in regards to portrayals of American Indians in film; that said, many of these old flicks leave a lot to be desired in their depictions.

Case study: Pimas and Yaquis

One thing that caught my attention was the particular usage of Pima and Yaqui Indians in plots featuring hostilities against white settlers. Had I encountered this just once or twice, I would have passed it off as a fluke – but repeatedly in various scripts, these southwestern peoples were singled out for their particularly aggressive and brutal behavior (replete with totally concocted accounts of their infamous atrocities against whites).

This took me by surprise, since both peoples were peaceful agriculturalists, and I was not aware of any history that would precipitate such a mythology.

“Although the Akimel O’odham [Pima] did have conflicts with other groups they are thought to have been primarily a peaceable people, because they never attacked Euroamerican settlers and they were most well known for their aid to immigrants.”(Wikipedia)

And again:

“The Pima have always been peaceable, though when attacked, as in former times they frequently were by the Apache and others, they have shown themselves by no means deficient in courage… Prisoners were rarely cruelly treated; on the contrary they shared the food and clothing of their captors, usually acquired the Pima language, and have been known to marry into the tribe.” (Access Genealogy)

The Yaqui likewise had little or no history of warfare up until the time of the Spanish conquest. Eventually, brutalities by Spanish authorities and later the Mexican government forced them into the mountains of the American southwest, where resistance movement similar to the Cheyenne “dog soldiers” sprang up. The only significant engagement with US forces was a skirmish in 1918 during the Mexican border war.

So what led to the choice of the Pimas and Yaquis being cast in this light? My guess is arbitrary ignorance; the writers cared just enough about historical authenticity to select a tribe from the correct geographical region (they could never get away with staging a Seminole uprising in Arizona, right?) but not enough to get the story straight. After all, they weren’t writing a history book – it’s just entertainment. And who’s going to differ, if anyone should even bother to look it up? After using the Apache so often, it was time for a change.

So this device was used once in a plot, and it caught on, the fallacy firmly implanted; small matter if the Pima became permanently maligned in the process.

Right: A collage of Pima people (Wikipedia). In the center, Ira Hayes, of Iwo Jima fame.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Unfortunately, it is exactly this kind of selective ignorance that characterizes so much of what American culture perceives about Native Americans. And when the line between history and popular myth becomes blurred, one has to wonder, who stands to lose more – the Indians who are stuck with a phony label, or average Americans of the non-Native variety who carry around a trumped-up version of their nation’s past?

Of course the all-around worst part is that most people watching these films probably believe that the Pima and Yaqui nations don’t even exist anymore – a misperceived fate dogging much of Indian country. Classic tv unwittingly helped to propagate the myth of the vanishing Indian.

Even in entertainment, the media has long played a powerful role in shaping public perception of Native Americans, and in doing so has influenced the course of both Native and non-Native populations.

Right: Modern-day Pima actor Gregory Zaragoza, in costume as the Half-King for the docudrama The War that Made America – an outstanding production about the French and Indian War.

Some of my biggest gripes about Indian portrayals in the movies:

1. Native roles being played by non-natives

   (Particularly very obvious gaffs like choosing a blue-eyed actor to play an Indian.) Unfortunately this is a practice that has not been abandoned altogether – as if there aren’t enough qualified Native actors to fill these positions!

   If I had grown up in the 50′s, for instance, I would have assumed like most people that “real” Indians were so rare that it was only the exception to find one for a movie role. In this way, the modern Indian came to be seen as a relic, only appearing in sideshow fashion a la the Wild West shows.

2. Contextual inaccuracies

   E.g., uniformly portraying all Indians as living in tipis, or wearing buckskins and the stereotypical “big chief” headdress; warped portrayals of the roles of Indian women in Native culture; and taking gross liberties in recounting actual historical events.

3. Extremely predictable stereotypes

   “Savage” Indians villainized for the antagonistic role vs. the cowboy hero; or the more sympathetic role of the “noble savage” (often sidekicks) who stand above their comrades by helping out the white guys, or by their eagerness to assimilate, etc; or in another version, Indians are portrayed as victims, in such a way that it sets up the white protagonist to become their advocate/avenger. Either way these portrayals are both misleading and demeaning.

   Of course, these kinds of films were all made before the infamous “eco-Indian” stereotype became popular in the later part of the 20th century.

Recently, portrayals of Indians in film have become more complex than the traditional two-dimensional depictions, in keeping with popular culture’s slightly more developed view of them. The stereotyping tendencies are still present, but are more subtle.

One common example is the “sage & warrior” pair: the wise, spiritual chief/medicine man type contrasted with the stoic, temperamental fighter. Still the “big chief” and “brave” images – just in modern garb.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

The strangest thing in my mind is the way that portrayals of Native Americans have morphed through time to reflect the changes in public consciousness. What the general public wanted to be, or how they wanted to see their world, was projected onto Native Americans. You can see this especially in the rise of the environmental movement after the 70′s, when the Indian in film changed radically to become the mystical, connected-to-nature ideal that so much of society yearned for. That said, it’s an exception rather than a rule to find a film in which Indians are cast in any other light other than how mainstream America sees them.

The famous “Keep America Beautiful” commercial of the 70′s. The actor, Iron Eyes Cody, was in fact Italian.

When directors and screenwriters (including Indians, since there’s plenty of Native talent coming to the forefront these days) do go beyond the narrow bounds of misconception and generalization, however, the results are often powerful and dynamic. The goal isn’t a “white guilt trip” but rather a work that is thoughtful, objective, and realistic – the same standards by which we would judge any other subject. These will be the kind of films that all kinds of people will watch generations from now and think, “These people were thinking outside of the box – they weren’t stuck in their own era, they saw their subject in a critical way that makes their work still valid today.”

There’s a lot of make-up work to be done in terms of Native portrayals in film. Hopefully we can do a good job to raise our grade average.

What do you consider to be the best representations of Indians in the movies? What Native actors, actresses, and directors have made the biggest impact? Log in and share your opinions.