Moving Picture Indian
One of the funniest things of the funny things that has happened in many a day is the protest of real Indians against moving picture Indians. A delegation appeared before the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and later before the President one day last week, and made strenuous speeches against caricaturing of themselves in this style in moving pictures.
The noble redman has his thinker on straight in this matter. Of all the silly, ridiculous, outrageous and degrading things that go to make up the moving-picture shows the moving-picture conception of the Indian is absolutely the silliest and most absurd. In the first place, the moving-picture Indians all wear war bonnets. There would not be an eagle left in the United States by now if the Indian wore war bonnets as depicted by the nickelodeon entertainers. The various kinds of blankets that these Indians wear are another absurdity. It does not make any difference whether it happens to be a bathrobe, a doormat or a piece of discarded carpet when the moving-picture makers start out to make up an Indian film.Their bow-legged, snub-nosed and turned-up-nose actors robe their almost senile forms in the garments picked up from some rag dealer,
put on war bonnets made of a feather duster, fold their arms and look as stern as curly locks and snub noses will let them look, and 'appear,' as "Got-to-get-there-quick," "Man-afraid-of-his-wife" and "Sunny-borrowed Sorrow," and the moving picture is manufactured.
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| 1911 feb 23 The National Tribune |
This article ends with:
"The Indian Department is going to try and break up the absurd pictures. If the moving-picture film makers would try to make real representation of real Indians they would be valuable to preserve. But the way they are doing it now is simply to bring obloquy upon all concerned.
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| 1911, Feb 23 The National Tribune |
