Comparison of depictions of Native Americans in Ford's films

Extract

[...] The Indians are not conceived as humans as they are not shown to have wives, families (and there is only one instance where a white woman is shown), and overall are shown to comes at odds with the agenda and best interests of the white man. The eruption of the Indian is shown as a threat to white civilization in general. (Wood, 1997). This examination of two movies Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Searchers (1956), both directed by John Ford clearly give quite mistaken depictions of Native Americans at the time. The movies serve to glorify the white man while showing the Indian in a position of inferiority. From this essay it is clear [...]

[...] In many films of this time and genre, Indian women who end up marrying white men are typically killed before the film ends. This puts forth the message that white men are within their bounds to have exotic adventures, mixed-race marriages are not shown to be a lasting endeavour. They are shown as tools of the white man's pleasure. In The Searchers, the Cheyenne wife is discovered dead in a village raided by soldiers. (Nicholson, 2003: 49-50). In films of this genre, male Indians are typically associated with the stereotypes of the hostile savage and the noble savage, and this is usually done simultaneously in the same film. [...]

[...] Comparison of depictions of Native Americans in Ford's films An examination of Hollywood films of the past, particularly those that fall into the genre of the Western are entertaining, but also serve as an interesting window into the context of Native American relations in the nineteenth and twentieth American centuries. The two movies Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Searchers (1956), both directed by John Ford give quite erroneous depictions of Native Americans at the time. In many ways these movies serve to glorify the gunfighter and the simple notion that the cavalry was good and the Indian was bad. [...]