"Indian Pictures":
Film Portrayals of Native Americans in the Silent Era
Hundreds of "Indian pictures", as contemporaries called Indian-centered and Indian-themed films, were shot between 1908 and 1912 and in these four years, Indians appeared on screen more than in any other period of cinematic history (Aleiss 2005, 2; German 2012, 17). Indian-centered and Indian-themed movies focus respectively on Indian narrative exclusively or mostly, and many favor an Indian perspective. They differ from the Western genre in so far as the Western always places white characters and their perspective at the center of the narrative as well as portraying Indians as the all-purpose enemy of white settler or cowboy societies in frontier regions (Smith 2003, 6). Being perpetual antagonists reduces Native American societies to screen societies that are dominated by stoic warriors that usually fall into the pattern of the noble or ignoble savage. Some of the stereotypes associated with the Western genre from the late silent period onward are absent in the early "Indian pictures" which offer characters that are more developed and less stereotypical (Bowser 1990, 173).
Two of the most notable differences between "Indian pictures" and later cinematic representations of Native Americans is the presence of Indian kids and Indian families on screen. Even though their screen time might be limited in comparison to other categories such as the warrior or the chief (see Fig. 1), they are visible enough with almost fourteen percent of the total Indian time on screen. Furthermore, the screen time of the villain is unexpectedly low in the early silents. The diverse representation of different characters is underlined by the presence of specific motivations for specific actions in “Indian pictures” - in contrast to the Western where Indians do not seem to need a reason to kill men, women, and children.
The diversity of images and the will to diverge from simple notions of evil and good is attributed, among other things, to the involvement of Native American people as actors and even more important filmmakers. Filmmakers such as the Winnebago director James Young Deer offered the most stark opposition to stereotypical screen Indians. Even though Young Deer followed most of the conventions of the time, movies such as White Fawn's Devotion (1910) “represent a criticism of the genre from within the genre that is far sharper in its advocacy for Indigenous rights then the “pro-Indian” and “revisionist” Westerns of the second half of the 20th century” (Hearne 2012, 94). The use of Native American actors for all the Indian roles and the resulting lack of whites in redface as well as his portrayal of functioning mixed-blood families and female Native perspectives, set films like Young Deer's or to a certain extent those of Thomas Ince apart. James Young Deer and his wife Lilian St. Cyr were not the only Native American involved in the production of movies. Hearne lists the following actors: William Eagleshirt (Lakota), Molly Spotted Elk (Penobscot), Luther Standing Bear (Lakota), Richard Davis Thunderbird (southern Cheyenne), Charles Bruner (Muscogee), Charlie Stevens (Apache), Ann Ross (Cherokee), Chief Red Fox (Lakota), Elijah Thurmont (Algonquian), Rod Redwing (Chickasaw), Nipo Strongheart (Yakama), Chief Yowlachie (Yakama). She also mentions the Lakota actors working for Thomas Ince in 1912 (Hearne 2012, 88).
Indian-themed and Western movies in the silent era can be characterized in three or four different phases. The first phase lasted until approximately 1908 and was characterized by an interest in Native Americans that was mostly ethnographic and promoted films as documentaries. Only with the increasing popularity of narrated or narrative stories and the advent of the nickelodeon trend did Western or Indian-themed movies come into existence in the second phase of Indian portrayals in the silent era. The early “eastern” Westerns and Indian-centered movies produced mainly in New York and New Jersey were replaced with the conventional visual patterns of Plains cultures and southwestern tribes, including the typical landscape shots of Monument Valley (Simmon 2003, 9-12). This time period saw James Young Deer's efforts as director, as well as the widespread use of Native American actors in movie projects such as Thomas H. Ince's contract with the Oglala Sioux, whose camp in California became known as “Inceville”. It also saw the only known official Native American protest against the stereotyping of their people in the silent era, in which representatives of the Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho traveled to Washington, DC and denounced both the stereotypical depiction of Native Americans in the films and the underemployment of Native actors in the same. (Aleiss 2005, 9; O'Connor 1980, xvi). Obviously, even if there were depiction that were more diverse and positive than those in later periods, many Native Americans were still not content with how their screen images came across.
The fact that despite positive and diverse images were present in the silent films so many of the stereotypes that remained from the silent era are indeed negative, is often attributed to the advent of the Western at the end of the silent era (Kilpatrick, Jay, Bowser, Scott). The exclusive concentration on Indian-white conflict in the Western genre replaced the dominant emotion of nostalgia with “fear and hostility,” which explains the further reduction of Native portrayals to negative stereotypes (Jay 2003, 9). In a matter of a few years, Indians changed from being the “tragic central figure[s]” in melodramas to being the “convenient villain stereotype” in the Westerns, which was primarily a device to advance plot development (Bowser 1990, 176).