"Indian Pictures":
Film Portrayals of Native Americans in the Silent Era
White Fawn's Devotion (1910)
summary
A white settler receives a letter informing him that he has inherited a great fortune, but his Native American wife is upset by the news, believing that he will leave her if he leaves to accept the inheritances. She stabs herself with a knife and when the father finds her, the child sees him and believes he is guilty of murder. She runs to the tribe to accuse him of the crime and the Indians come to her help and start chasing the settler. The chief captures him and brings him back for tribal justice, which is supposed to be carried out by his daughter by crushing him with a big rock. White Fawn, who survived her suicide attempt, arrives to rescue him. The last reel of the movie his missing, but the playbill suggested that the settler renounced the inheritance in the east in favor of a life with his wife and daughter in the West (Hearne 2012, 93).
tone
Since whites are practically absent, Indians are not portrayed as inferior. They are clearly in charge of the situation and the white settler does not assert control over them at all. He does not even demand that his Indian wife adopt Western customs for him. Even though the reaction to the alleged murder seems rather drastic and violent with numerous men charging after the settler on horseback, the Indian who captures him ties him up and brings him back for a tribal justice ritual instead of killing him on the spot. Indians come across as civilized people who have a strong notion for right and wrong, rituals to keep revenge at bay, and who are capable of love.
White Fawn's Devotion is a 1910 film produced by Pathé Frères and written and directed by the Winnebago filmmaker James Young Deer. Native Americans playing themselves is something sadly not achieved again until decades later and Native American directors remained rare until late into the 1990s, thus already making White Fawn's Devotion's production process a statement for the difference of the silent era. In spite of its “Pocahontas-moment”, in which the Indian wife White Fawn rescues her white husband from certain death by throwing herself over him, it is usually praised as an example of Native American involvement in the production process in front of and behind the camera and of positive images in the silent film era (Aleiss 1995, 34; Hearne 2012 93).
representation
The film presents a mixed marriage as a viable option and the Indian wife, White Fawn, has considerable screen time (see chart). Her marriage to the settler is shown as a valid and functioning marriage, even though she has not adopted a white style of dress or shows any other sign of assimilation. The settler is obviously devoted to his wife and kisses her hands when he believes she is dead. When they are reunited, they are shown as a loving family of three, which is the only time in all six movies that an entire family of father, morther, and child is shown. Furthermore, the primary neighbors and immediate first helpers are Indians, not whites. The absence of actors in redface and the stress on the female character's perspective are extraordinary for the time (Hearne 2012, 94-7).