Shannon Cowell - Final Project

Revisionist Westerns: The Old West meets Vietnam

Jack Crabb’s grief over the tragic fate of the Native Americans becomes emblematic of the nation’s lament over the assassinations; the extinction of cultures, species and habitats; and the pollution and devastation of the environment… American youth recognized that the Indian way of life—deeply spiritual and ecologically sound—was a model that modern society had ignored (Kasdan and Tavernetti 132).

Distrust of political and social institutions was at an all time high in America in the sixties and seventies; young people questioned the motives behind the Vietnam War. This distrust lead to a reexamination of the nationalist history they were taught in school, and revived interest in people’s ethnic heritage. The interests of filmmakers in this time period were no exception; in this essay, I will examine Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man, Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue, and Elliot Silverstien’s A Man Called Horse. These revisionist westerns of the early 1970s debunked racial stereotypes, assuaged white guilt from four centuries of aggression toward Native Americans, and metaphorically called attention to the contemporary culture clash taking place in Vietnam.
Before the early 1960s, Hollywood westerns portrayed Indians as barbaric, present only in action scenes, intent on raping and pillaging. The image of a backward and primitive savage helped make the notion of a criminal Manifest Destiny easier to stomach (Lusted 238). This attitude derives from “the Puritan fear of the uncontrolled wilderness and its inhabitants” (Kasdan and Tavernetti 122)

…popular media depicted Native Americans both as scantily dressed men with feathers in their hair, bareback on horses, brandishing spears as the attacked innocent whites, and also as calm, wise elders, in full-feathered headdress, models of stoic restraint (Kasdan and Tavernetti 124).

The latter description shows up more frequently in the films of the 1960s; civil rights movements and the ethnic revival inspired depictions of Indians that were slightly more realistic than the savage stereotype, which helped create remorse for the loss of their culture (Lusted 238). This idea stemmed from the writings of the European romantics, who saw the Native American as living a pure life in tune with nature, much like the ancient Europeans had long ago (Kasdan and Tavernetti 122). The new generation of younger filmmakers recognized these ideas and created films that questioned cultural ideals and standards of contemporary American society. Studios recognized the appeal of these filmmakers and their films to the counterculture.
On the whole, Little Big Man was a leap forward for Native Americans as far as their representation on film, but there was some stretching of facts to support Penn’s agenda. It was one of the first westerns to feature a Native American actor in a lead role (Lusted 243). Chief Dan George played Old Lodge Skins, adoptive grandfather of Jack Crabb and the chief of the Cheyenne tribe. “Often seen in warmly lit low-angle close-ups that emphasize his dignity, he delivers his lines with droll understatement and a unique twinkle in his eye” (Hilger 179). Old Lodge Skins jokes around and even talks candidly about sex (see Figure 1); he is an actual human being with quirks and insight, rather than being the stereotypical quiet old Indian man.
The film’s errors lie in the details, which heighten the contrast between the Native Americans and the white population. “Little Big Man posits its Indian characters as innocent victims of white aggression, defending a vanishing culture of greater moral worth than the better resourced ‘civilization’ that destroys it” (Lusted 238). General Custer is portrayed in Little Big Man as an absolute lunatic, along with most aggressive white authority figures in the film. Custer fanatically stands by his orders, even if he finds out later that they are misguided; his use of logic when taking Crabb’s advice as a scout is at best a bit confused. In his final scene—during his last stand—he believes that Crabb is the president and he attempts to ‘assassinate’ him. General Iverson in Soldier Blue goes on with his attack upon the Cheyenne even as Honus, an honest cavalry officer, tells him that he personally destroyed the guns the Indians were counting on and that they could not possibly fight for themselves. He also ignores their white flag of surrender and goes on to massacre the entire camp.



In the Little Big Man, the tribe responsible for any and all negative Indian actions is the Pawnee; in the book, the Cheyenne themselves are the ones who kill Crabb’s parents (Turner 116). The film also “avoids any direct reference to the Indian practices of mutilating the bodies of dead enemies” (Kasdan and Turner 119). However, mutilation of corpses and souvenir-taking are discussed in Soldier Blue as practices of both the American Indians and the U.S. Cavalry—but the cavalry is blamed for introducing the practice. Unacceptable moral conduct is reserved only for the whites. These are minor incorrect details, but they present a skewed picture of the realities of 19th century Anglo-Indian conflict—albeit skewed in a new direction.
The characters of Little Big Man and Solder Blue are in some cases more like the contemporary hippies than they are grounded in history. In one scene, Crabb has intercourse with his Indian wife’s three sisters, all in the same night, which alludes to the practices of free love. His rival, Younger Bear, becomes a Contrary, and is disgraced by the tribe because of his odd behaviors, not unlike the actions of a drug-induced trip (Kasdan and Tavernetti 131). In Soldier Blue, the young Cresta and Honus try in vain to stop the cavalry from raiding the Cheyenne village. General Iverson, the cavalry leader, claims that when he sees young adults behave in that way he “can’t help wonder what this goddamn country’s coming to.” The actions of young individuals against corrupt governmental structures are not unlike the struggles of the protagonists in All the President’s Men and Chinatown; this theme is common to many films of the 1970s.
These films seem to suggest that by ‘becoming’ an Indian, a white man can become exempt from his race’s bloody history (José Prats 129). Both Jack Crabb and Cresta feel that they have no real place in the world—they belong to neither the Indians or the whites, and because of this they claim no role in negative actions of either group, but can reap the benefits of claiming to belong to both. “The white hero’s presence […] in the massacre underscores its brutality, since he tries in vain to stop it before it begins…” (José Prats 130). The fact that the protagonists try and fail to stop the massacre makes protesting Vietnam appear to be far from worthwhile, and this fictional precedent may help assuage present feelings of futility. “The perspective that might have refigured the Indian begot instead only a flimsy refuge for a generation’s conscience” (José Prats 159). Civil rights and the ethnic revival of the sixties and seventies caused young people to look to their ancestral cultures or the cultures of others to balance out their identification with the imperialist American culture; in this way the white captives of the American Indians in Little Big Man and Soldier Blue are not unlike them in that they freely take whatever elements suit them from each culture.

These portrayals of Native American culture and Manifest destiny are shown through the lens of a white person. The culture and history of the Indians “…depends utterly not on tribal memory but on the white man’s remembrance” (José Prats 129), because the tribe does not exist anymore. The entirety of Little Big Man is narrated by Jack Crabb; the behaviors of both the Indians are related by him, and he alone passes judgment on them. Cresta’s perspective on the Cheyenne is the only counter to the perspective of the racist cavalry in Solder Blue. In no film of this era does an American Indian speak for himself.

Often that white protagonist succeeds in being a more successful Indian than the Indians themselves, as shown in A Man Called Horse. Horse is an Englishman who is captured by the Sioux, tortured and beaten, and only is recognized as a man when he kills (and scalps) a few of their enemies. He ultimately marries the conventionally pretty Sioux princess (see Figure 1) and becomes chief of the tribe. This film differs from Soldier Blue and Little Big Man; the film is about a white man championing his natural surroundings, which include the Indians themselves. The film appeals to the younger generation because it presents a fantasy of not only playing Indian, but living Indian, yet still coming out safely white in the end. It is worth mentioning that nearly 80% of the film’s dialogue is in the Sioux language; prior to this American Indians had either spoken English or grunted and hooted. A Man Called Horse was marketed as an anthropologically correct film, but it failed in this regard because of its lack of respect for Native American religion, fighting techniques (see Figure 3), and attitudes towards white people. Because of the white protagonists in all of these films there is a current of white superiority throughout them. “Rather than people whose cultures (like all cultures) were constantly developing, adapting to changing historical circumstances, these Indians were regarded and remnants from a stopped or dead culture from the past” (José Prats 128).



Nelson presents Sand Creek [from Soldier Blue] as proto-My Lai: the age old Manichaean struggle between ‘blood lust’ and ‘reason’ acquires its full force and import from this assumption that would have the four centuries of unremitting violence against native cultures in North America stand as an allegory for American military involvement overseas” (José Prats 157).

The quote above is not unlike what was thought of the Vietnamese during the conflict in Vietnam; they, like the Native Americans, were seen as a primitive subspecies by many officers, and were treated with great brutality. The war in Vietnam was an example of attrition warfare; the enemy “is worn down to the point of collapse […] the war is usually won by the side with greater reserves/resources” (Wikipedia). This tactic was unknowingly applied to the Native Americans by white settlers and the cavalry in the 19th century. Both the Vietnamese and the Indians in these revisionist westerns were “…dehumanized creatures against whom they committed atrocities as they seldom had done against white enemies” (Deconde 151). In both Little Big Man and Soldier Blue, the massacres of Washita and Sand creek, respectively, are disturbingly similar to the images coming back home from Vietnam. Women and children are killed with little regard, and burning homes are surrounded by piles of bodies. The campaigns of the United States against the Native Americans and later, the Vietnamese, stand out because they seemed so racially motivated. “The policymakers refused to accept the right of the Vietnamese to their own version of self-determination… Kill them all! Let God sort them out!” (Deconde 151). American Indians had no right of self-determination, or for that matter, preservation of their culture.



Revisionist westerns of the seventies, including Little Big Man, A Man Called Horse and Soldier Blue, were mirrors of the attitudes towards race and history of the decade. They showed more sympathetic portrayals of Native Americans, created an artificial sense of exemption from guilt in their white viewers, and echoed the graphic violence of the Vietnam War.






Works Cited


"Attrition warfare." Wikipedia. 26 Oct 2007

DeConde, Alexander. Ethnicity, Race, and American Foreign Policy. Richmond, VA: Northeastern University Press, 1992.

Georgakas, Dan. "A Man Called Horse (1970)." Western Movies. Ed. William T. Pilkington and Don Graham. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979. 125-128

Hilger, Michael. From Savage to Nobleman: Images of Native Americans in Film. Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 1995.

José Prats, Armando. Invisible Natives: Myth and Identity in the American Western. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2002.

Kasdan, Margo and Susan Tavernetti. "Native Americans in a Revisionist Western: Little Big Man (1970)." Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film. Ed. Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’ConnorLexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1998. 121-134.

Lusted, David. The Western. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2003.

Turner, John W. "Little Big Man (1970)." Western Movies. Ed. William T. Pilkington and Don Graham. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979. 109-122.