TV Westerns—Modern re-runs allow us to revisit the Old Wild West and the terrible portrayal of Native American Indians

By SJ Otto

These days I see a lot of cowboy shows, westerns as they are called, on such re-run TV stations as ME TV andHeroes & Icons. I get to relive all the great TV shows I saw growing up in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. One thing I don’t like about many of these shows is the way they treat the Native American Indians. On many of these westerns I’ve seen Indian attacks appear as often as cattle drives in the desert or stage coach robberies.

Many of these shows trivialize the roll that Indians played in the Old Wild West. There were a couple dozen cowboy shows. None of them were completely accurate in their portrayal of the Old West. But one of the worst aspects about these shows was their portrayal of Native American Indians. They were often portrayed as just being a nuisance, a simple danger or being in the way while people were moving west and developing the towns, rail roads and other institutions that we now take for granted. There are a lot of old shows I haven’t seen in reruns yet, but there are many I have seen including Gunsmoke,Bonanza,TheRifleman,The Rebel,Maverick,Have Gun – Will Travel,Cheyenne, and The Big Valley to name just some of them. Of them, Maverick is about the worst portrayal of Indians and Gun Smoke is probably the best.

Many of these shows never or rarely portrayed Indians at all. That was a safe bet.  Maverick was one that seemed to show the Indians as they were probably viewed by white people in the actual Old West. The Maverick Brothers, Bart and Brett, said they fought Indians when they were prisoners during the US Civil War. They fought for the Confederacy. They often fought Indians during various episodes. There was no dialog to debate the reasons for killing the Indians. In one episode a cowboy casually says, “I killed two Indians on the way here.”  It was as if he just killed a couple of animals. However, that episode came up with an interesting ending. It turned out that a women who was cooking for her restaurant to feed local minors, was actually killing some of the men and stealing their valuables. When the men in the camp found out and planed to hang the women, Bart points out that the man who shot two Indians will not be charge with murder.

“It’s not murder. They were just Indians,” the man insisted. Bart pointed out that since it wasn’t considered murder for a white man to kill Indians, it should not be considered murder for an Indian to kill white men. Many of these shows had at least one episode where the morality of killing Indians was questioned. In an episode of Have Gun – Will Travel, the main character, Paladin, hires a guide to take him into Indian country. The guide said something to the effect ‘exterminating the Indians is a dirty job, but the army might as well be the ones doing it.’ That was obvious sarcasm as to what the US Army was doing during the “Indians wars.” In that episode the guide and Paladin discuss the end of the Sioux Nation, explaining that it was just a matter of time before the US Army would wipe out the Sioux Indians from their land and destroy them as an institution. The Cheyenne Show was mixed in its treatment of Indians. They are still fought and at times the main character Cheyenne seems to blame both sides for the Indian Wars. He often tries to explain to other cowboys that the Indians keep their word and can be trusted, while many of the characters around him complain that the Indians are just “savages” that can’t be trusted. Gunsmoke has been the one show that almost always portrayed the Indians in a positive way. They were shown as more than just one dimensional characters and were shown as a people, with a rich culture. Marshal Matt Dillon has a good relationship with local Indians and often defends them against cowboys who hold the kind of prejudice views that were common in the 1800s. 

Now that the “TV Westerns” are being revisited by viewers as me, how do we treat them? Many of these shows were entertaining, but they were also attempts to portray a period in UShistory. The Wild West lasted from the end of the US Civil war until about the year 1900. Gunslingers and other interesting characters were written about in newspapers and cheap novels, during the time period in which the Old West occurred. In the 1950s, the new invention of TV allowed a renaissance of that culture years later. The accuracy of these shows wasn’t always that good, but sometimes they got history right. We can use old movies and TV shows as an educational tool. The Indians fought to defend their land and culture, from Europeans who fought to steal their land and destroy their way of life. Later, in many Western books, movies and TV shows, we see their cause trivialized and in some cases they were portrayed unfairly. One common theme we get is prejudice against a people and their culture. There was an arrogance that gave white people the idea that they were justified to taking the Indian’s lands and moving them to reservations. Native American Indians where humiliated and treated in a way that was just plain undignified. In some ways, there are some similarities to the way the US Army treats the people of the Middle East today.

If people can learn these things from these old TV shows, then they can serve a purpose.