Devon A. Mihesuah - American Indians: Stereotypes & Realities

AMERICAN INDIANS

Stereotypes & Realities

AMERICAN INDIANS

Stereotypes & Realities

by

DEVON A. MIHESUAH

CLARITY PRESS

Copyright 1996 Devon A. Mihesuah

ISBN: 0-932863-95-7

978-0-932863-95-9

reprinted 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2004.

UPDATED: 2009

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: Except for purposes of review, this book may not be copied, stored in any information retrieval system, in whole or in part, without permission in writing from the publishers.

In-house Editor: Diana G. Collier

Cataloguing in Publication Data:

Main entry under title:

Mihesuah, Devon A. (Devon Abbott), 1957

American Indians : stereotypes & reality

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-932863-22-1

1. Indians of North America - Popular opinions.

2. Stereotype (Psychology) - United States. 3. Public opinion - United States. I. Title.

E77.M543 1996973.0497 C96-9200382

Clarity Press, Inc.
Ste. 469, 3277 Roswell Rd. N.E.
Atlanta, GA. 30305
http://www.claritypress.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am sincerely-grateful for the advice and suggestions from Curtis Hinsley, Professor of History at Northern Arizona University (N.A.U.), Flagstaff, Arizona; Shirley Powell, Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology Lab Director at N.A.U.; James Riding In, Assistant Professor of Justice Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona; Donald Worcester, Professor Emeritus of History at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas; Dan Boone, photographer at the Bilby Research Center at N.A.U.; and as always, my husband, Joshua.

LIST OF PHOTOS

Chief Wahoo

Indian dolls

Pawnee earth-covered lodge

Plains grass house

Potawatomi wigwam

Buffalo

North American Tribes at Contact

Tsaya logo*

Cherokee alphabet

Jorge Rivero as a warlike Indian

Goyanthlay (Geronimo)*

Comanche code-talkers

Henry Mihesuah in Marine uniform*

Henry Mihesuah in Comanche dress

Three Sisters Garden

Half-breed Jennifer Jones

Indian women in canoe*

Quanah Parker*

Navajo mannequin

Gallup Indian Ceremonial

William Wirt Hastings*

Chief Henry

Cherokee John Ross and Wife Mary Stapler

Indian Statue

Cherokee Female Seminarians*

* Also appears on front cover

To Joshua

INTRODUCTION

No other ethnic group in the United States has endured greater and more varied distortions of its cultural identity than American Indians. Distorted images of Indian culture are found in every possible mediumfrom scholarly publications and textbooks, movies, TV shows, literature, cartoons, commercials, comic books, and fanciful paintings, to the gamut of commercial logos, insignia and imagery that pervade tourist locales throughout the Southwest and elsewhere. Nor are the stereotypes consistent: they vary over time, and range from the extremely pejorative to the artificially idealistic, from historic depictions of Indians as uncivilized primal men and winsome women belonging to a savage culture, to present day Indians as mystical environmentalists, or uneducated, alcoholic bingo-players confined to reservations. It is little wonder, then, that we have misinformed teachers in our schools, who pass along their misconceptions to their students.

Not only Euro-Americans, but also Europeans, Africans, and Asians appear to have definite expectations of what Indians should look like. Indian men are to be tall and copper-colored, with braided hair, clothed in buckskin and moccasins, and adorned with headdresses, beadwork and/ or turquoise. Women are expected to look like models for the Leanin Tree greeting cards. These mental images are so pervasive that in the Southwest border town where I lived from 1989 to 2005, it is not uncommon for tourists to survey the downtown streets and ask where all the real Indians are, while short-haired Navajos dressed in jeans and cowboy boots stand right next to them.

Obviously, these images are not created from contact with real Indians. Most non-Indians still learn about Indians from movies. This influential medium often denigrates some Indians while elevating others to larger-than-life dimensions. Whether due to ignorance, lack of access to Indian advisers, or to the tendency to stereotype everything typical of American filmmakers whose primary interest is in making money, American films largely focus on those images that the public recognizes. Recent movies attempt to portray Indians more realistically than the blatantly racist movies of the past decades such as The Searchers (1956), The Unforgiven (1960), and White Comanche (1968), but Hollywood still has a long way to go. In the movie Dances With Wolves (1990), for example, the Lakotas, a tribe popular among hobbyists and New Agers, are positively portrayed as people with human emotions, values, and spirituality, whereas Pawnees, whose culture is no less humane than that of the Lakotas, were insultingly characterized as barbaric. As so few movies portray Indians in their current circumstances, a movie so widely popular as this one tends to perpetuate the image of Indians as living in the world of the past, and however inadvertently, reinforces the belief that all Indians were just like the Lakotas of the northern plains. And of course, as is typical of earlier Hollywood productions concerning Indians, or indeed any non-European people, we still find that the lead female is Euro-American, and she falls in love with a Euro-American hero. Apparently, many Euro-Americans cannot watch a movie about Indians unless it is really about Euro-Americans. The hero and heroine ride off together at the end, leaving the Lakotas to their unpleasant fate. If the audience had been provided with a more fully historical rendering, including the fact that the Lakotas and other plains tribes were subdued and confined to reservations by the 1880s, it seems likely that the movie would not have been as successful.

Another controversial movie, The Last of the Mohicans (1992), not only focuses on the Euro-American stars (at the expense of the most interesting character, Magua), but gives the impression that the Mohicans (Mohegans) have disappeared. That is probably surprising news to the Mohegans, who still live in Connecticut. The Walt Disney production of Pocahontas (1995) epitomizes Hollywoods commercialized approach. The heroine absurdly sings with forest animals, is clothed provocatively (contrary to the modest dress typical of women of her tribe) and in true Disney fashion, is blessed with a Barbie doll figure. Disney has made an exorbitant amount of money from this happy image, yet that is all it isan image. The movie ignores the reality that Pocahontas was only 12 at most when she met John Smith. She did not love him, she did not marry him, and she died at the age of 22 in England. Within twenty years after the period depicted in the movie, the Powhatan confederacy was practically exterminated at the hands of colonists and disease. It will take years of cinema to mitigate the influence of the stereotypes that Hollywood has created for profit.

Many accurate books about Indians have been written, yet misinformation abounds and inundates our children at an early age. Racist television cartoons, which were drawn in the 1940s and portrayed Indians as befeathered savages, are still shown today as entertainment. As a result, children still play cowboys and Indians. Were their games to reflect historical reality, they should be playing United States army and Indians since Indians and cowboys rarely fought each other. (Besides, the first cowboys were Mexican Indians.) Children pretending to be Indians grunt ugh, which has grown into a nonsensical, verbal symbol of the quintessence of Indianness Children tell each other not to be Indian givers. This phrase implies that Indians took back what they gave. Many Indians suggest that this might more properly be changed to U.S. government givers.