What defines a western genre?
The vision of the American cowboy, the lone ranger with a pistol on his hip and a horse to ride off into the sunset with, represents the yearning America had for expansion into the mythical Western frontier. Personified through the cowboy, this itch formed a film genre, the classic Western.
Cowboys became warriors, meaning they needed an enemy.
This enemy manifested as the Native American, the savage, uncivilized, and cruel obstacle in the way of America’s goal of manifest destiny. The self-righteousness Americans held towards the frontier is portrayed through the treatment of Native Americans in these films about conquering the frontier. Rather than individuals, Indians were a feature in the landscape of the West, evident through the sexualization and objectification of Native women in Westerns. Westerns only personified Indians when they assisted the white man in achieving his goal of domination of the West. Through the representation of Native Americans in Western films, the entitlement Americans felt towards the frontier is illustrated through American exceptionalism and white patriarchal dominance.
WOMEN
Western films display the white patriarchal superiority complex through the representation of romantic relationships between Native Americans and white people. Romantic relationships between white people and Natives were heavily policed, although anti-miscegenation laws primarily targeted white women rather than white men.2 Wives held a subordinate position to their husbands, and although oppressed in relation to white men, white women were held in higher social regard than Native men. Therefore, the idea of a Native man taking ownership of something a white man couldn’t was tragic.3 Patriarchal values prompted laws targeting white women in interracial relationships because of the hold white men felt they had over women’s bodies.
Women, regardless of race, were seen as sexual objects rather than individuals, a theme that still permeates in film today.
In John Ford’s 1956 film The Searchers, Ethan, a Confederate veteran, is on a journey to rescue his niece Debbie, who has been abducted by the Comanche tribe. Five years into living with the Comanches, Debbie marries the chief of the tribe, Scar, becoming one of his wives. Upon learning this, Ethan’s once-good intentions to rescue her are replaced with vengeance, seeking to kill her for marrying Scar.4 The sudden change in attitude can be explained through Ethan’s racist demeanor throughout the film towards Native Americans. In the film, Ethan and Martin, his half-brother, encounter the U.S. Cavalry who have rescued white women from captivity of the Comanche. Hoping to find Debbie, Ethan and Martin enter to find a room of manic women. One cradles a doll and screams at the men in fear, insinuating that the women have been raped by the Comanche.
They laugh hysterically and don’t speak English
Alluding to the notion that sexual encounters with Natives drive one to insanity, that “having been raped by an Indian, and having survived it, is ‘a fate worse than death.’”5 A cavalry officer says “It’s hard to believe they’re white”6, prompting Ethan to say “They ain’t white, anymore. They’re Comanche.”7 By saying this, he disqualifies their whiteness, therefore their validity, because of their sexual contact with the Comanche, regardless of whether these encounters were consensual or not. The white women are now viewed as tainted and impure, reflecting how Ethan sees Debbie after her marriage to Scar. This provides evidence as to why Ethan wants to kill her, to save her from “the completely degrading situation that they imagined she had been forced into.”8 Throughout the movie, other characters perpetuate this theme, including Laurie, who wants to
settle down with Martin. When Martin tells Laurie he must leave again to search for Debbie, she objects, describing Debbie as “the leavings of a Comanche buck sold time and again to the highest bidder with savage brats of her own,”9 solidifying the notion that after sexual contact with a Native man, white women are no longer seen as pure.
The racial double standard between Native and white women is portrayed in the film through using a Native woman’s tragedy as humor, and a white woman’s tragedy as cause for a years’ long journey. Martin is one-eighth Native and can speak some Comanche. While communicating in Comanche to find Debbie, he accidentally makes a trade with a tribe, receiving a wife named Look. Look’s existence is used entirely as comedic relief despite the tragedy surrounding her.
Look cannot speak English but does things that she thinks will please Martin, such as making him food and coffee,10 adding to the stereotype of Native women as controllable, hinting at the patriarchal stake white men felt they held over Native women. When Martin retires to sleep, Look lies down beside him, proceeding to agitate Martin. He proceeds to kick her and sends her tumbling down a hill. Rather than shock, Ethan erupts in laughter at what Martin has just done.11
Although Martin himself is partly Native, he views himself as white, in a superior position to Look both racially and in terms of gender. Look is a nuisance to him, as he cannot simply return her, “for fear of offending her father and tribe.”12 Later on, the men encounter the remnants of a massacre against a band of Comanche by the U.S. Cavalry and find that Look is among the dead. Look’s existence was for comedic relief, and her death is just the conclusion of a nuisance. The remainder of the film talks “of Look as Martin’s ‘squaw’… regarded as a big joke.”13 Earlier, the film demonstrates that when a white woman has a sexual
encounter with an Indian, it results in the loss of her sanity. Through this example establishing that Native men are disastrous for white women, Debbie’s circumstance is dire, hence the need to rescue her. However, Look is now living with “Ethan and Martin, the ‘civilized’ whites,” 14 so her circumstance is not as disastrous as Debbie’s. Despite the similarity between the two women’s situations, Look’s death is seen as an issue resolved, while Debbie’s marriage to a Native man, her racial inferior, is seen as disastrous.15
The sexualization of Native women in film instituted them another aspect of the Wild West for the white man to conquer. Set in the Canadian wilderness in the 1880s, the 1940 film Northwest Mounted Police begins by saying “Two vast territories, newly opened for civilization, each policed by its own great organization.”16 This is an introduction to the colonialist narrative that pervades throughout the film, as it insinuates that the current inhabitants, Native Americans, are uncivilized. When a Texas Ranger and Canadian Mountie join forces to subdue the unruly Natives and continue building their “great nation”, a woman named Louvette stands out, as she is the daughter of the rebel leader. Louvette is painted as a “savage and fanatical enemy of the civilizing mission of the great nation.”17
Director Cecil B. DeMille wanted to portray Louvette as “‘half animal, beautiful as hell… a gorgeous black panther, something that is death; and yet anybody will go to it and stroke it and pet it and love it.’”18 DeMille’s animalistic and sexualized portrayal of Louvette embodies the perception that Native women weren’t fully human, so it was “perfectly acceptable to ravage their bodies.”19In the 1959 film Last Train from Gun Hill, the town marshal returns home to find his Native wife raped and killed.20 The remainder of the
movie documents the marshal’s journey to bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice. Rather than focusing on the violence Indigenous women faced, the film focused on the ramifications of the violence on men, and was often used as motivation for revenge.21Ironically, almost all rapes or murders of Native women were executed by white men.22 Dehumanizing them as purely sexual beings rather than women constituted them as another feature in the landscape of the Wild West, therefore another obstacle for the white man to conquer.23
MANIFEST DESTINY
The Western, America’s most notable contribution to film, is a genre forged by the concept of Manifest Destiny and is portrayed by depicting Native Americans as either savage or noble, depending on their willingness to assimilate into white society. Manifest Destiny is the concept that whites were meant to conquer the frontier, and because this landscape included Native Americans, they needed to be conquered as well.24 Westerns created the concept of the “noble savage,” an Indian who will assist the white heroes in film, and the “ignoble savage,” the most common Hollywood Indian, who is stoic and barbaric.25 These stereotypes established Natives as obstacles in the way of colonization rather than a settled civilization to coexist with, and Hollywood producers ingrained this mentality into the mainstream through depictions of Natives and Indigenous culture in film.
The 1923 film The Covered Wagon introduced the construct of Native Americans as obstacles in the way of westward expansion, setting the theme for epic Westerns for years to
21 Oshana, “Native American,” 48.
22 Oshana, “Native American,” 49.
23 Oshana, “Native American,” 48.
24 Phil Allard, “Manifest Destiny,” American Indian History Online, last modified 2006,
https://online-infobase-com.proxy5.noblenet.org/HRC/Search/Details/6?articleId=592557&q=manifest%20destiny. 25 C. Richard King, “Indian Representation in Film and Television,” American Indian History Online, last modified 2020,
come.26 The plot comprises the obstacles that white settlers face on their way to Oregon, such as hunger, weather, and Native Americans.27 To combat their hunger, the group kills buffalo, in turn aggravating the Natives and leading them to attack their camp. By establishing them as violent, The Covered Wagon frames Natives as a people that need to become controlled because of their inability to assimilate into white society. Through depicting Natives as a menace to white society, directors established the stereotype of Natives being an obstacle in the journey towards Manifest Destiny.
These savage and hostile depictions of savagery towards white settlers and other tribes further justified Americans in their mission to populate North America with their “more advanced civilization,” feeling they were benefitting the Natives through spreading their religious and cultural values to the West.28In Cecil B. DeMille’s 1936 film The Plainsman, these themes are furthered through the depiction of the journey of Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickock, both of whom appear as “American legends that fight to turn a savage frontier into a civilized nation.”29
The trailer for the film describes the love between Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock as being “as great as the nation they helped to create!”30 Dismissing the previous inhabitants of the West as “savage” is conducive to justifying the takeover of the frontier, perpetuating the notion that a civilized nation was only present when white people colonized it.
Depictions of the “noble savage” in Western films insinuate that the only good Indian is one who willingly assimilates into white society, again showing the patriarchal hold held by white men.31 The 1950 film Broken Arrow begins with a white man, Tom Jeffords, treating a dying fourteen-year-old Apache boy with gunshot wounds in his back. The boy’s tribe finds him and assumes that Jeffords is the man behind the wounds, but the boy clears his name, leading the
26 Angela Aleiss, Making the White Man’s Indian (n.p.: Praeger Publishers, 2005), 31.
27 The Covered Wagon, directed by James Cruze, Paramount, 1923.
28 Allard, “Manifest Destiny.”
29 Aleiss, Making the White, 60.
30 The Plainsman, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, 1936.
31King, “Indian Representation.”
Apache to treat Jeffords with respect. When he goes back to town, he learns that the Apache have been attacking mail couriers, thinking they are sending messages for the U.S. Army.32 Jeffords volunteers to talk to the Apache leader, Cochise, to make a deal to let the couriers deliver their mail. Broken Arrow was one of the first films after WWII to portray Natives in a positive light, but rather showed that “Indian conformity to civilization was inevitable.”33
When Jeffords first meets Cochise, Cochise speaks to him in perfect English, dodging any cultural discrepancies between the two and erasing that aspect of Native culture. Cochise agrees with Jeffords to let mail couriers pass through Apache territory, only after Jeffords explains that if he doesn’t, the U.S. Army will meet him and his people with violence. Only the Apache make sacrifices in this relationship, as Cochise agrees to let mail couriers pass safely through their territory.34
This theme affirms that the erasure of Native culture. And their inevitable assimilation into society is the only way to achieve a peaceful coexistence between the two groups.35
Later in the film, Jeffords marries an Indian woman, who becomes killed when a group of white miners ambushes Cochise and Jeffords. Jeffords declares his vengeance upon whites for the murder. However, Cochise says, “‘No one on my territory will open war again—not even you.’”36
Cochise’s choice to avoid violence towards white people. Even though killed one of his own, is why he becomes viewed as a “noble savage.” Cochise aided white people in their conquest of the frontier by allowing them to pass through Apache territory to avoid violence towards his people. However, because he helped them, he becomes viewed as noble. Although Cochise is male, because he is an Indigenous male he is still a lesser member of society than the white man. Cochise becomes only viewed as noble because he is assisting the white man in maintaining his patriarchal hold over society.
Unfortunately, the patriarchal hold white men maintain in society permeates today, although there have been many advances made towards breaking its grip. Post World War II “liberalism” introduced a wave of more sympathetic interpretations of Natives, but the inevitable assimilation of Natives into white society was still the present theme.37 After the infamous My Lai massacre by American soldiers in Vietnam. Parallels were drawn through the similar attempts at extermination of both the Vietnamese and Native American people. 38
As Americans reflected, the creation of the Revisionist Western used that newfound self-consciousness to show the negative effects of that racism.39 Even with this new awareness, today Indigenous women face the highest rates of victimization in the United States.40 The population of Native Americans in the United States, according to the 2010 Census, was 5.2 million, making up only .01% of the population.41 The aftershocks of the harmful stereotypes established by white producers continue to shape popular culture to this day.
What defines a western genre? Written by Simran Cheema
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Peer Edited by Megan Vaz ’21
37 Aleiss, Making the White, 116.
38 Edward Buscombe, ‘Injuns!’ Native Americans in the Movies (n.p., 2006), 133.
39 Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indians (n.p.: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 61. 40 Roe Bubar and Pamela Jumper Thurman, “Violence Against Native Women,” Social Justice 31, no. 4 (2004): 70. 41 United States Department of Commerce. (2010). The American Indian and Alaskan Native Population. https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/c2010br-10.pdf
Aleiss, Angela. Making the White Man’s Indian. N.p.: Praeger Publishers, 2005.
32 Broken Arrow, directed by Delmer Daves, Twentieth Century Fox, 1950.
33 Aleiss, Making the White, 90.
34 Aleiss, Making the White, 91.
35 Aleiss, Making the White, 90.
36 Aleiss, Making the White, 92.
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Broken Arrow. Directed by Delmer Daves. Twentieth Century Fox, 1950.
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14 Oshana, “Native American,” 49.
15 Oshana, “Native American,” 49.
16 Northwest Mounted Police, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, Paramount, 1940.
17 M. Elise Marubbio, Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film (n.p., 1963), 107. 18 Marubbio, Killing the Indian, 108.
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3
4 The Searchers, directed by John Ford, Warner Brothers, 1956.
5 Hui, “The Racial,” 195.
6 The Searchers.
7 The Searchers.
8 John A. Price, “The Stereotyping of North American Indians in Motion Pictures,” Ethnohistory 20, no. 2 (1973): 164, https://doi.org/10.2307/481668.
4
9 Hui, “The Racial,” 198.
10 Oshana, “Native American,” 49.
11 The Searchers.
12 Hui, “The Racial,” 197.
13 Oshana, “Native American,” 49.
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What defines a western genre?
