How
The West
Was Remixed:
By Dylan Schrader
The West
The West
Cowboys & Indians
At the heart of the Western genre, there is the narrative of cowboys and Indians. As Paul Varner writes, "The very phrase cowboys and Indians conjures up an automatic image of Native Americans being, first, "the Other" and, second, "the Enemy" (124). As the clip below shows, much of the representation of American Indians was unflattering, one-dimensional, and served to advance the heroic narrative of the white protagonists. Films like The Searchers (1956) advanced the ideas of "the savage," and even dressed white actors in red face (see the image above). In the clip below, John Wayne's character and others attempt to rescue his niece from a group of American Indians that kidnapped her and killed her entire family.
But, as Varner writes, in more recent films, there has been a "significant effort in American culture to accept that whites deliberately planned and attempted genocide against Native Americans in the 19th century...The dawning of recognition affects the way Native Americans are depicted in alternative and postmodern Westerns" (125). Though I don't love the term "alternative" Western, Varner's supposition of the "dawning of recognition" is correct. Below are two very different examples of more rounded American Indian representation in film, the first from The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and the second from Dead Man (1995):
Each tells the story of the genocide American Indians suffered at the hands of white immigrants, though both do this in different ways that fit with the movie in which they occur. The character Nobody in Dead Man tells his story, one that speaks of historical fact, in a surrealistic way that fits well with director Jim Jarmusch's surreal world. In The Outlaw Josie Wales, the character Lone Watie tells his story in a darkly humorous, though tragic way, which fits the feel of the movie. Red Dead Redemption 2 also presents a more complicated look at the American Indian experience—the white protagonist of the story both helps the American Indians and ultimately leads to a tribe's downfall through the actions of the leader of the protagonist's gang. Though he is sympathetic to the cause of the American Indians, he is powerless to act against his gang leader, who is a father figure to him. Ironically, the gang leader makes an appearance in the first Red Dead Redemption, which takes place after the events in Red Dead Redemption 2, and he leads a gang of American Indians.
In both games, your character both helps and hinders American Indians through his actions, and in this way, the games continue on the path set by more recent Westerns that treat the history of American Indians in a fairer way that does not downplay the violence they suffered (and also committed at times).