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Indian chiefs and Indian are the two categories with the most screen-time compared to other Indians. As seen in figure 4, together they reach 23.9 percent of the total running time of the movies. All other Indian categories combined reach 23.6 percent. Only one third of the screen time divided among the chief and the warrior belongs to the chief, making the warrior the biggest category of all six categories.

Indian Chiefs & Indian Warriors

Both the chief and the warrior have their occasional 'bad' or ambivalent moments. The chief in The Squaw's Love forbids his daughter to marry the man she loves and has his supporters beat the suitor up when he protests. In The Invaders the chief seems to promise his daughter to the richest suitor. This chief, on the other hand, is also able to read, and when the treaty he had made with the whites is broken, he doesn't seek revenge immediately but strives for a diplomatic solution first. Indian warriors are least attractive in their role as “unwelcome suitors”, as a title card in The Invaders puts it eloquently. They are usually overlooked by the Indian maid who always seems to prefer a white man. At the same time The Last of the Mohicans offers Uncas as the object of a white girl's desires. In spite of the fact that both he and Cora die, the potential mixed-race relationship is viewed favorably even though a title card announces that the two are separated by the “mystery of birth”.

 

Both chiefs and warriors are shown as individuals and groups with specific reasons to act in a certain way. The Sioux chief in The Invaders attacks the fort because the treaty was broken. The leaders of the Navaho in The Vanishing American attack Mesa because they have been robbed of their land and their livelihood. This is important because the lack of explained motivations is partially what made the Indian appear so savage in the later Westerns. After all, what should the audience conclude about a character that would attack innocent settlers, women, children, and soldiers without any reason whatsoever than that they were bloodthirsty savages? The warriors and chiefs vary from this format decisively.

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