Customer Reviews

Making the White Man's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies

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"Making the White Man's Indian..." as a title, borrows from Fergus M. Bordewich's 1998 book title "Killing the White Man's Indian" which he borrowed from a historical quote. Aleiss does a very scholarly but readable review of Hollywood's fascination with American Indians. There are only one or two books of this genre available to college film classes so this is a very welcome addition. It is one of the better, if not the best, of such books. Aleiss knows Hollywood better than her literary predecessors and it shows in her use of box office data. It's one thing to say Hollywood's interest in Indians, as a film subject, has ebbed-and-flowed and quite another to give real economic detail for this. Hollywood studios make movies on topics that sell or they try another topic. In the early days of movies the Indian was a "cool" topic until people quit buying tickets. When big box offices returned with the "Duke-type" aka "John Wayne" westerns and their portrayal of "western Indians" the genre was hot again. Aleiss points out that Indian movies that star Indian actors have been around longer than contemporary memory would suggest and this is a real contribution on her part. She mixes in a lot of good "back story". This reviewer learned a lot about James Young Deer and questions about his own heritage that other writers had missed or had not reported. His escapades with his female actors were discussed as one reason Hollywood cooled toward his work. Such details are what make "Making the White Man's Indian..." both fun-to-read and scholarly at the same time - a difficult task for any history book.