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Cowboys and Native Americans Aren’t Always Enemies

By Henry C. Parke

For generations, Americans have grown up playing Cowboys and Indians, and just like when they play Cops and Robbers, it’s taken for granted that the groups are enemies. While onscreen, a friendly relationship between a Native American and a cowboy was the exception rather than the rule, for this Native American Heritage month we’re looking at some of the notable exceptions — and we’re broadening “cowboy” to include soldiers and other non-Natives.

Dances with Wolves (1990) comes immediately to mind. The winner of seven Oscars, and the most financially successful Western ever made, its story of the friendship between a lone Cavalry Officer (Kevin Costner) and a helpful Sioux (Graham Greene) triggered the modern era of such movie friendships.

While the following year’s Last of the Mohicans, showing the friendship of Hawkeye (Daniel Day Lewis) and Chingachgook (Russell Means) is the most familiar take on James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, there have been nearly 50 films and TV series based on the 19th century writer’s works, including a Mohicans TV series from 1957, starring Lon Chaney Jr. as Chingachgook. The international appeal of these tales built on friendships is so great that there was a German-produced, Bulgarian-shot Deerslayer in 1967, Russian versions of The Pathfinder in 1987 and Deerslayer in 1991, and in 2006, an Italian cartoon series.

While virtually unknown in the U.S., German novelist Karl May is the non-English-speaking world’s James Fenimore Cooper and Louis L’Amour combined, a favorite of both Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler. His sagas about the fictional Apache Chief Winnetou and his pioneer friends were the basis for a tremendously popular series of German Westerns in the 1960s, starring French actor Pierre Brice as Winnetou, with Americans Lex Barker as Old Shatterhand and Rod Cameron as Old Firehand. Their success led to the Spaghetti Western.

Of course, the most familiar cowboy and Native American friendship is that of the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, which began on radio, and segued to the big screen in 1938 with a Republic serial, with Tonto played by Chief Thundercloud, a Cherokee. Jay Silverheels, a Canadian-born Mohawk played the role in 217 TV episodes and two features. In the regrettable Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981), he’d be played by Michael Horse, who is Yaqui and Apache. Of course, in the 2013 version Tonto is played by Johnny Depp, who claims Cherokee heritage, as does, interestingly enough, Armie Hammer, who played his Lone Ranger.

For more mature entertainment, Broken Arrow (1950), directed by one of Hollywood’s unsung masters, Delmer Daves, was a game-changer, telling the true story of the friendship between Cochise (Jeff Chandler in an Oscar-nominated performance) and former soldier Tom Jeffords (Jimmy Stewart), and Jeffords’ efforts to make peace between the Apache and the Americans. Stunningly photographed, it’s an often-brutal story. Today it’s a given that indigenous characters are played by indigenous actors, but that wasn’t true for most of the 20th century. And while the lead Indians were played by whites Chandler, and Debra Paget, there were strong supporting roles for John War Eagle, Chris Willow Bird, J.W. Cody, Iron Eyes Cody—an Indian not by birth but by tribal acceptance, and on a break from playing Tonto, Jay Silverheels as a bitter and angry Geronimo. This led to a popular Broken Arrow TV series, starring John Lund as Jeffords and Michael Ansara as Cochise.

Following the success of the Broken Arrow movie, schlock producer Sam Katzman and horror-gimmick director William Castle (The Tingler) made the unexpectedly good Conquest of Cochise. It’s set during 1853’s Gadsden Purchase when, for the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, the U.S. bought land from Mexico which became parts of New Mexico and Arizona. John Hodiak, as Cochise, befriends Maj. Tom Burke, portrayed by Robert Stack. The most noteworthy element is a four-minute montage when Burke’s Mexican girlfriend, played by Joy Page, is taught by Cochise how Apache children were then raised, and that in those days, an Apache man was forbidden to speak to his mother-in-law. By the end of the sequence, Joy’s wearing buckskins, learning how the Apache kiss, and Maj. Burke needs to find a new girlfriend: even between cowboys and Natives, friendships have their limits!

On similar story territory to John Ford’s Fort Apache, Budd Boetticher’s Seminole moves the action from the West to Florida’s Everglades, and the very distinctive look of the locale, Seminole clothes and military uniforms is a welcome change. Rock Hudson is the young 2nd Lt. Caldwell, dispatched to his home state to assist glory-seeking Maj. Degan (Richard Carlson) in relocating the Seminole, and angers his commander by trying to do so peacefully. He has no idea that his half-Seminole boyhood friend John, the first Native American accepted to West Point before he disappeared, is now Osceola (Anthony Quinn), leader of the Seminole resistance. In a much more active role than women usually have in these films, Perry Mason’s Barbara Hale plays Revere, the childhood friend to both men, their romantic interest, and their much-endangered go-between. An exceptional film, it features memorable performances by Lee Marvin, James Best, and in some of the best work of his career, Hugh O’Brien, unrecognizable as a Seminole impatient with Osceola’s attempts at peace.

With his 1957 film Run of the Arrow, maverick writer-director Samuel Fuller created a sub-genre of Westerns where a white man—in this case ex-Confederate Rod Steiger—is made a tribal member after withstanding harrowing rituals. The following year Ralph Meeker, who played a Lieutenant in Arrow, would star in a similarly themed Wagon Train episode, “A Man Called Horse”, based on the Dorothy Jenkins novel, which would be filmed again in 1970 as a feature, starring Richard Harris. Elliot Silverstein’s film would be followed by two sequels.

Also in 1970, the story of a white welcomed into Native life was played both for laughs and tears in Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man. Dustin Hoffman stars as Jack Crabb, a century-old man reminiscing about Custer and surviving the Little Big Horn. The heart of the picture is his tribal education under the tutelage of Old Lodge Skins, for which Chief Dan George became the first Native to receive an Oscar nomination for acting. He was not the first choice for the role: those who turned it down included Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield and Richard Boone.

The Outlaw Josey Wales is often described as a revenge story, and while that is the through-line of the plot, there is much more to this, one of Clint Eastwood’s best films of any genre. Chief Dan George is delightfully funny as Josey’s sidekick. And Will Sampson, the mute Chief Bromden from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is the menacing Ten Bears, cold yet reasonable, who respects Wales for his courage, even if they don’t become close friends.

Still, the cowboy and Native American friendship stories that stay with us are those found on television, not only the previously noted shows, but also Fess Parker’s Daniel Boone, and his bond with Ed Ames’ Mingo, and on Gunsmoke, Matt Dillon’s friendship with Burt Reynolds as the half-Comanche blacksmith Quint, where we saw, week after week, that such relationships could work.

In recent times, shows like The Tall Tales of Jim Bridger on INSP offer a thoughtful exploration of these interactions. For example, the episode “Brother in Arms“ tells the story of Bridger and Washakie, two men from different backgrounds who begin as enemies but come to trust and depend upon each other for survival.

Other series like Into the Wild Frontier and Wild West Chronicles also present rich, nuanced portrayals of Native American characters and their interactions with settlers. These shows seek to reflect a more balanced perspective, acknowledging both the challenges and moments of understanding between the two groups.

We hope, in telling these stories, to portray a deeper understanding of the diversity of experiences in the history of the American frontier and the role of Native American cultures in shaping history.

About Henry C. Parke  

Henry’s new book, The Greatest Westerns Ever Made, and the People Who Made Them, was published by TwoDot in February. The Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based writer has contributed articles to the INSP blog since 2016, been Film Editor for True West since 2015 and has written Henry’s Western Round-up, the online report on Western film production, since 2010. His screenwriting credits include Speedtrap (1977) and Double Cross (1994). He’s the first writer welcomed into the Western Writers of America for his work in electronic media. He’s done audio commentary on over thirty Spaghetti and domestic Westerns.  

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