Native Americans in the Movies Portrayals From Silent Films to the Present

An incident from John Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn (1964) dramatizes the two prevailing images of fictional Native Americans in narrative movies. A newspaper editor repeats the typical headlines about the Cheyenne in all the major papers, “Bloodthirsty Savages on the Loose, Burning, Killing, Violating Beautiful White Women” and concludes, “It’s not news anymore.” He then says, “We’re going to take a different tack. We’re going to ‘Grieve of the Noble Red Man.’ We’ll sell more newspapers that way.” With a disregard for historical accuracy similar to that of the editor, directors of westerns have used the images of the Savage or the Noble Red Man to show the superiority of their heroes, or to comment on political, social, and moral issues of their day