The Western Movie and the Image of the Native Americans

The Zum Inhalt: Western is not just the oldest, it was also one of the most popular Zum Inhalt: film genres for many decades. From its very beginning, the genre had at its heart plots based on the conflict between Euro-American settlers and the indigenous population. This world-wide success meant that westerns continue to shape the public image of Native Americans in many countries. This is all the more problematic because for many years a colonialist attitude was characteristic of the genre, which defined the frontier as a border between civilization and wilderness and stylized the indigenous population as "noble savages" or even more frequently as "gruesome beasts".

Cinema was thus adopting stereotypes that had already become established in the theater and literature of the 19th century. One rich source of stories and motifs for the Western were the dime novels in which the battles between the settlers and government troops and the Native Americans were glorified. One hero of these dime novels, William Frederick Cody, known as Buffalo Bill, achieved national fame. The former scout and buffalo hunter exploited this popularity by creating a kind of show business that would point the way for the iconography of the Western: Cody’s Wild West Show featured indigenous warriors in fantastic costumes as showground attractions. These shows created the idealized image of the "prairie Indian" that was more or less part of the imagery of cinema from day one: Indeed, the oldest known film recordings of Native Americans from the year 1894 feature indigenous actors from Buffalo Bill’s show troupe (see details in the Library of Congress stream).

Portrayal of the Indigenous Warrior as a Brutal Invader

The history of the Western movie began with Edwin S. Porter’s "The Great Train Robbery" (USA 1903). The early films of the genre still frequently portrayed Native Americans as "noble savages". When Hollywood began expanding from 1910, the Western also went through a rapid development. Films become more lucrative and many indigenous actors from the Wild West Shows switched as extras to the film studios. David Wark Griffith, too, the most important director of early American cinema, used Native Americans as extras in his Western "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch" (USA 1913). The Zum Inhalt: Silent Film is about an attack by indigenous warriors on a Settler Village – a typical scenario for a Western, giving the original inhabitants the role of invader and thus reversing the real, historic basic constellation of violent colonization by the Euro-Americans. While Griffith’s film develops the settlers as characters, he portrays the attacking hordes without individual features as blood-thirsty Barbarians. The racist nature of the Zum Inhalt: mise-en-scène is underlined by the fact that the more prominent indigenous roles are played by "White" actors who overact their parts in parodic fashions. "Redfacing" remained a common practice in the genre for decades.

The big silent westerns of the 1920s also reduced indigenous actors almost exclusively to the role of accessory. Their task was limited to that of reinforcing the overall impression of the setting’s realism. As in "The Iron Horse" (USA 1924) by John Ford, which is about the construction of the first transcontinental railway in the US. The legendary Western director hired as extras hundreds of Sioux, Cheyenne and Pawnee, for whom the film production represented a rare opportunity to earn some money, given the poverty that otherwise prevailed on the reservations. In the film, they pop up mainly as hordes of riders that swarm over the railway workers like hungry locusts. The paternalism of the genre is highlighted by the plot element that the warriors are provoked into their attack by a criminal "White" landowner masquerading as a Cheyenne. On the one hand, this exonerates the attackers; while on the other hand, the film thus covers up the fact that rebellions by indigenous tribes were a legitimate and self-determined form of resistance.

Using Native Americans to Create Suspense

John Ford‘s Zum Filmarchiv: "Stagecoach" (USA 1939) is a further example of a film that completely ignores the indigenous perspective. This talkie, which is considered the archetypal masterpiece of the genre, is about a stagecoach journey through a region in which a group of rebellious Apaches led by Geronimo carry out brutal ambushes on "Whites". At first, all we see of the indigenous warriors are intimidating tracks, the plot climaxes with a pursuit through the desert. The portrayal of the Native Americans serves one purpose only; building up suspense and adding some dynamism to the conflicts being conducted among the "Whites". There are three close-ups of indigenous actors. Yet the zooming camera was not intended to generate emotional empathy, rather to depict the indigenous population as impenetrable enemies who embody the opposite of our culture.

"Stagecoach" , the first film shot by Ford in Monument Valley with extras from the Navajo Nation Reservation, does not feature a single talking role for an indigenous actor – the warriors conform to the cliché of the silent "Indian". On a more fundamental level, the introduction of the sound track evoked the question of how indigenous characters should speak. The standard solution was to the Native Indians, usually played by "White" actors, speak broken, heavily-accented English. The Westerns that Ford made after World War Two portray Native Americans in a somewhat more nuanced fashion – which is often interpreted in specialist literature as a response to the racist madness of National Socialism. Accordingly, in his late work Cheyenne Autumn, 1964, Ford focused on the scandalous living conditions on the reservations. The indigenous extras may speak their native language – but they are Navajo playing Cheyenne. The drama affects a false realism that was clearly aimed solely at "White" audiences.

"White" Natives

Delmer Daves’ "Broken Arrow" (USA 1950) marked the beginning of a phase of the genre, in which the annihilation of indigenous nations received a more critical treatment. The film is about the scout Tom Jeffords, who makes friends with Cochise, the leader of the rebellious Chiricahua tribe, marries an indigenous woman and becomes a peace broker between the warring parties. Although Daves does his best to paint an objective picture of the situation facing the Apaches, the film is still told from the point of view of the "White" protagonist – and uses his language exclusively. Daves admits to the this flaw of his own accord, to a certain extent, by having Jeffords say at the beginning that the events that followed actually happened – and only the language was translated. That even a progressive Western such as "Broken Arrow" offered Native Americans no opportunity for self-representation is also reflected by the fact that the main indigenous roles were played by Euro-American stars, Jeff Chandler and Debra Paget. All other Hollywood Westerns from the era that presented Native Americans in a more positive light continued to practice "Redfacing" in deference to the prevailing system of hiring stars. Accordingly, icons such as Audrey Hepburn, Burt Lancaster and Rock Hudson slipped into "Indian costumes" at one time or other.

Indigenous Culture as a Positive Alternative

When Hollywood‘s studio era finally drew to a close in the 1960s and new progressive protests against the Vietnam War, the classic Western also dies off. Spaghetti Westerns and their cynical view of the world destroyed the conservative icon of the shining "White" Western hero. At the same time, the American Indian Movement cast the public spotlight on discrimination against Native Americans. Then the hippie movement discovered indigenous culture as an alternative to the destructive American Way of Life. It was in this context that the late Westerns of the Zum Inhalt: New-Hollywood era exploded some US myths. One example is Arthur Penn‘s "Little Big Man" (USA 1970), which tells of a settler boy who survives an ambush and is adopted by Cheyenne and finds himself caught between indigenous and "White" America and the fronts of the First Nations Wars. Penn’s film undermines the traditional heroic narrative of the birth of the American Nation in the style of a genre parody to illustrate the brutality of the US Cavalry – an analogy for American war-mongering in Vietnam – in drastic fashion. Penn’s sympathy is clearly with the Cheyenne, whose community he portrays affectionately, and who are all played by indigenous actors – although they do speak in fluent English.

After the Western lost relevance in the 1980s, Zum Filmarchiv: "Dance with Wolves" (Kevin Kostner, USA/GB 1990) reinvented the genre. Kevin Costner’s directorial debut also focuses on a "White" outsider: Lieutenant Dunbar, who, in the American Civil War, asks to be posted to the frontier, where he makes contact with the local Lakota, wins their confidence and ultimately moves into their village. Costner’s film goes beyond its genre predecessors in that it painstakingly attempts to reconstruct the indigenous way of life. Hence, all tribesmen and women speak Lakota all through the movie. And although Costner does idealize the natural way of life led by the Sioux, he also succeeds in introducing indigenous culture, and especially indigenous characters and actors, to an international mass audience.

The Big Post-Colonial Western: Yet to be Made

US blockbusters such as "The Missing" (Ron Howard, USA 2003) or "The Revenant" (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, USA/HK/ TW 2015) show that indigenous actors are now taking on central roles and the authentic portrayal of Native Americans has long since become a mark of quality even in mainstream movies. American independent films, especially, have proven time and again that the collision of pioneers and Native Americans still has not been exhausted as a stock of cinema material. One outstanding example of this is Kelly Reichardt‘s "Meek's Cutoff " (USA 2010), which tells the story of a wagon train authentically and from a female perspective. Another blank space in the genre, however, remains: there is room for a big post-colonial Western that tells of the conflict between Native Americans and Euro-Americans from an indigenous perspective.