1910 Brant Sero denounces dime novels. Says his people are maligned and misunderstood
For more than 50 years, young American boys were reading Dime Novels ( Penny Dreadfuls - in England) that published adventurous "Blood & Thunder" tales in thin, disposable "yellowbacks" that were made popular when added to newsstands at railroad depots across the country.
They were read by the millions, mostly young boys, but some grown men admitted to enjoying them, and a great deal spun adventurous stories of brave frontiersmen battling savage, bloodthirsty redskins out in the wild, wild west. Critics, parents and school teachers hated them. They inspired a great deal of death and crime, and runaways who wanted to "shoot Indians" and imitate their heroes (such as below.)
Brant Sero (Ojijatekha/ Mohawk - 1867-1914) was an actor, interpreter, and lecturer who, while in Berlin, Germany in 1910, decided to publicly declare his disdain for the publishers of these books.
1910, July 7 Democrat and Chronicle . - Indian Defends His Race.
"Berlin - Brant Sero, who calls himself Ojijatekha, and is a full-fledged Mohawk, has declared war on the publishers of the penny-dreadful literature in Germany which depicts the American Indians exclusively as a race of blood-thirsty scalpers and horse thieves.
He is furnishing the Berlin newspapers with vivacious interviews describing his fellow redskin as a maligned and misunderstood people. At their forthcoming congress at Muscogee, Brant Sero says the modern generation of American Indians intends to take vigorous action to the direction of clearing up the world's dime novel conception of the noble red man."
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| 1910, July 7 Democrat and Chronicle . |
He had a point. A favorite topic of young boys - and even older males - were that of the fiendish Redskin who must always die at the end of the book.
They hit their peak in the 1880s, but continued to publish, until eventually morphing into Western and Pulp Magazines in the 1920's. Wild West Shows, Moving Pictures, Comic Books and Television would eventually feed young boys cravings for Blood and Thunder, and then Boys Scouts allowed them to live out their desires without having to actually run away or kill someone.
