This paper focuses on the evolving policies relevant in the twentieth century and the underlying ideologies by looking at the representation of Native Americans in popular culture. Both, contemporary policy and ideology, are formative powers that influence popular culture. Then again, popular culture, especially the medium of film, is a purveyor of national ideologies, values, and trends to society. Here, it will be argued that the shifting policies on Native Americans are reflected in their representation in the cinematic productions of "The last of the Mohicans".
A diachronic analysis will help to filter out both changes and consistencies of the popular perspective on American Indians in film throughout the last century. In order to do so, four filmic versions of "The last of the Mohicans" will be examined: the 1920 silent movie, the 1936, the 1977, as well as the 1992 release. Analyzing representational tools, their functions, and the preferred reading within each movie – as coined by Stuart Hall – and a comparison between the movies will constitute the theoretical approach and will help to pinpoint ideological functions and the role of policy at the time of each of the adaptions. The focus of scene analysis will be on the depiction of violence on the one hand, and on relationship dynamics between Native Americans and Whites on the other hand.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans
3 Last of the Mohicans 1920: Assimilation
4 Last of the Mohicans 1936: Indian Reorganization Act
5 Last of the Mohicans 1977: Civil Rights Movement
6 Last of the Mohicans 1992: Continuity
7 Résumé
8 Works Cited
Introduction
Federal and state relations towards Native Americans have had a long history of changing policies. Upon first contact and during the first decades of the colonies, settlers were especially interested in peace and fur trade treaties with the surrounding tribes. However, the high numbers of new arriving settlers from Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth century changed the treatment of Native tribes. High demand for land and resources let tensions between the white population and the Native Americans grow. While in the beginning of the thirteen colonies, tribes were met as foreign entities - friend or foe -, this changed fundamentally in the nineteenth century. “As federal Indian policy moved during the nineteenth century from the foreign to the domestic realm, it was consistently articulated as a ‘problem' to be solved.” (Fixico, Federal 379, cf. Buscombe, ‘Injuns!’ 104f.) The American Indians1 were perceived as an inferior race and as an obstacle to westward expansion. They were “in the way” of the white settlers for they were not expected to be able “to adapt to the modern world” (Churchill, Fantasies 169, cf. Lacy, The United States 86f.).
The suggested solutions to the “Indian problem” had changed substantially over time and led to a cyclic back and forth of Native American policy. In this context, various scholars write about a swinging pendulum: Policy varies from the infamous Removal Act 1830 to the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) 1934, from termination and displacement to sympathy and accommodation. To whatever pole policy makers in Washington D.C. leant towards: Tribes, tribal land and members were continuously treated as a problem to be solved (cf. Fixico 379 and Deloria, Introduction 5). Donald Fixico argues that these policies had always been informed and shaped by ideologies prevalent at the time (380).
This paper focuses on the evolving policies relevant in the twentieth century and the underlying ideologies by looking at the representation of Native Americans in popular culture. Both, contemporary policy and ideology, are formative powers that influence popular culture. Then again, popular culture, especially the medium of film, is “a purveyor of national ideologies, values, and trends” to society (Bataille/Silet, Introduction xix). Here, it will be argued that the shifting policies on Native Americans are reflected in their representation in the cinematic productions of The last of the Mohicans. A diachronic analysis will help to filter out both changes and consistencies of the popular perspective on American Indians in film throughout the last century. In order to do so, four filmic versions of The last of the Mohicans will be examined: the 1920 silent movie, the 1936, the 1977, as well as the 1992 release. Analyzing representational tools, their functions, and the preferred reading within each movie - as coined by Stuart Hall - and a comparison between the movies will constitute the theoretical approach and will help to pinpoint ideological functions and the role of policy at the time of each of the adaptions.2 The focus of scene analysis will be on the depiction of violence on the one hand, and on relationship dynamics between Native Americans and Whites on the other hand.
2 James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans
To better understand the comparison of the cinematic adaptions, a short glance at Cooper's original novel will come in useful. It was written 1826 and became a part of a series of novels called The Leatherstocking Tales, consisting of five novels. He had been writing at a time, when the Euroamericans were fighting to find common ground, a joint identity amongst the immigrants coming from different countries. Cooper was part of a movement of artists that sought to establish an identifiable American culture and history, “a strong national personality” (Kilpatrick, Keeping 71). Jacquelyn Kilpatrick argues that Cooper's novel contributed to the myths of American nationalism and the settler as the American prototype - symbolized by Nathaniel Bumppo, or Hawkeye -, and also to the myth of the Vanishing Indian (71ff.).
Cooper himself, Kilpatrick argues, was torn between his role as a land owner, as a Native culture sympathizer and nostalgist, and as a writer of the Romantic Movement, which deemed the extinction of the “Indian race” to be inevitable (cf. 76). It should not be forgotten, though, that he had been writing at a time, when racism and cultural taboos like miscegenation were the dominant social standards. Maybe it was for this reason, that Cora was originally a mixed-blood (in contrast to the movies later discussed), making it easier for the American reader to accept the romance between her and Uncas. The underlying sentiment at the time was fulfilling Manifest Destiny and its westward expansion, for which indigenous tribes were merely an obstacle. With the Removal Act 1830 around the corner, the signs were pointing to termination. “The conflicts in the novel are over land ownership, and it is ultimately a story about the contest between the French and the British for North American soil, not about the Indians, ‘last' or not, except perhaps as attachments to the land, much like the trees, rocks, and the other dangerous wildlife” (ibid. 73) - annoying attachments that had to be fenced in reservations.
What made Cooper's Last of the Mohicans so intriguing for film makers in the next century was his novel as a carrier of national myth, a vessel which can be filled with many different symbols, and the ambiguity, which leaves room for different interpretations and readings (cf. ibid. 77f.). Film makers indeed utilized that room, what makes it interesting to look at the different adaptions.
3 Last of the Mohicans 1920: Assimilation
The contemporary policy on Native Americans in the first two decades of the twentieth century were still shaped by the General Allotment Act 1887. Its essential purpose was the assimilation of the Natives to become part of the “mainstream of white American life, economy, and culture” (Fixico, Federal 385). Tribal land was broken up and given - allotted - to individual tribal members, thereby basically dissolving tribal structures of common land and property.3 “Allotment [...] pointed to the destruction of Indian societies [...], forced [them] into a capitalist economic system [...], and their Native cultures [...] into American culture and society” (ibid. 384). At that time, assimilation was seen as the solution to the “Indian problem”, but the implementation of the allotment policy resulted in many injustices.4 Not only by the forced absorption of Native land and culture into the American system tribes were victimized, but also by the ambiguous legal status of many tribal members. According to Fixico, by the 1920s, “the failure of the allotment policy had become painfully apparent” (385). At the time of the production of the 1920 adaption of Last of the Mohicans, though, the current policy was still allotment and assimilation. The underlying racism and discrimination in that way of thought is found in the movie.
Kilpatrick's argument, the 1920 version being a liberal, even anti-racist (even though she does not use this term) movie, exploring boldly the possibility of a cross-racial relationship, is debatable (cf. Keeping 79f.). Rather, the relationship between Cora and Uncas joins the many examples of cross-racial romances involving Natives and Whites which end in death of one or both characters before their love comes to consummation (cf. Kilpatrick., Celluloid 63f.). The relationship itself actually is arguably white-centric: The only reason the romance comes to existence is Cora's interest in Uncas. Clarence Brown and Maurice Tourneur, who directed the silent movie, show this by letting Cora constantly stare at Uncas in a supposedly dreamy manner (which compared to today's standard looks rather bored and apathetical). Uncas, on the other hand, never shows any sign of affection. It looks like his feelings are secondary to the development of their relationship. Cora's gaze seems like not even leaving him a choice but to give in to her desire. When the group surrounding Hawkeye and the Mohicans hide in a secret cave, on the run from Magua and the Hurons, a commentary appears saying: “The bond of a common danger - drawing together these two, so widely separated by the mystery of birth” (min. 19).5 However, to this point of the story Uncas still has not shown any sign of affection for her, nor has he said a word to her. The romance indicated in the commentary seems imposed, even forced on the viewer, who gets caught off guard since the absence of any sign of affection on Uncas' side makes the announcement come at a surprise. After all, the first real conversation between Cora and Uncas still takes place in the cave: At dawn, Uncas draws her attention to the rising sun. As he is telling her something, the movie's commentary reads: “Simple words of a savage - yet revealing depths of thought and imagination” (min. 20), actually revealing the racist sense of superiority of the (white) film makers present in the movie.6
There is a difference between the cruel, yet appropriate, depictions of the evil villain in a movie and the feeding of racist prejudices against an ethnic group by portraying them one-sidedly as monstrous beasts. A distinction has to be made. In the 1920 adaption it is the case of the latter, even though critics like Jacquelyn Kilpatrick see traits of Native sympathy in the movie. One character in the story seems to support Kilpatrick's view: Captain Randolph is a coward, is rejected by Cora, and finally becomes a traitor when telling the French about their military advantage. Particularly the fact that Randolph comes out on the short end competing with Uncas for Cora makes it look like the directors of the movie let the Mohican triumph. However, racism, as seen in the cave scene, comes to light in other situations as well, especially when the myth of the bloodthirsty savage is promoted.
In the beginning, when the viewer does not know yet that Magua is evil, the directors decided to give hints towards Magua's real character. Captain Randolph approaches him to ask him whether he is the one who is supposed to bring Colonel Munro's daughters to Fort William Henry. Magua meets Randolph with his knife pointed at him. He continues to play around with his knife and pulls out a small gnawer, stabs it, and smudges some animal remains on his bare leg. Shocked and disgusted, Randolph leaves the scene. While this is a harmless start, it gets extremely violent in the course of the story.7 Especially emphasized should be the assault on the unarmed trek leaving Fort William Henry, led by the women and children, after the French and the Huron leaders agreed to a British surrender. Drunk and incited to violence by Magua, Huron warriors brutally start to kill women, children, and babies, and continue then, like locusts, to raid the fort, not stopping at injured, defenseless soldiers, burning down the houses.
It is not by accident that the warriors resemble members of African tribes. The widespread anti-African American resentments of the time and the connotations of the black bodies depicted here are used to underline the viciousness of the “Indian savages”. The way the movie indulges in cruelties by the Natives is conspicuous. One scene stands out: Hurons had destroyed and plundered a wagon, apparently deaf from screams and too blind in their rage to become aware of a mother and her baby sitting in it, leaving them unharmed. The viewer is relieved at first, but after a few scene cuts, tragedy runs its course. A drunk Huron notices the baby weeping inside the destroyed wagon. The mother desperately tries to calm her child, anxiously staring at the opening. The man, who has a white skull painted on his chest, takes his knife and puts it between his teeth. Like a predator, he crawls on all fours into the wagon. The overwhelming sense of being cornered in the back of the vehicle is supported by the camera's work. The front opening of the wagon is directed towards the sky. The camera's low angle shot shows the perspective of the child. The medium close up of the man changes to a close up and finally to an extreme close up shot as his half naked body and grotesque face advances towards the defenseless. Because the camera shot is directed towards the sky, the lighting emphasizes the movement of the body by contrasting it against the brightness of the sky and lets his face and body appear particularly dark. He grabs the baby and tries to pull it out of the mother's arms, but ends up pulling both of them out of the wagon because she holds on to the child too firmly. Ultimately, he manages to wrest the infant from the mother's hands and violently throws it up in the air, out of the viewer's sight, while laughing bizarrely. Furious, the woman takes a rifle and kills him with one stroke.
A few more examples will show how the movie feeds racism and the myth of the Vanishing Indian - in this way reflecting the hostile policy and sentiment against Native Americans of the time. Magua's lust for Cora fuels anxieties that already existed among the earliest European settlers: The savage raping a white woman, defiling her and the purity of the white race. Mixed entanglement was more likely to be accepted when it involved a white man and a non-white woman. The thought of a white woman having contact with a non-white man - voluntarily or not - was far less acceptable (cf. Kilpatrick, Celluloid 63f.). After taking the Munro daughters captive, Magua demands Cora to “consent to be [his] squaw” (min. 29), if she wants to save her sister's life. Alice steps in, begging Cora not to go with him: “No, no! Rather let us die together!” (min. 29), suggesting it is better to have them both get killed than one of them being the wife of a savage (cf. Buscombe, ‘Injuns!’ 45). When the captives try to escape, one of the Hurons goes after Alice and catches her. He grabs and fixates her on some wooden beams by putting his body above her in an obvious pose. She gets saved, of course, by a white man, but remains lying there as if dead.
Noticeable, too, is the absence of any ‘home' when it comes to Native Americans depicted in the movie. Although this fact probably resembles more the policy of the Removal Act 1830, it still fits in with the assimilation policy of allotment. The only American Indians that are shown in their homes are the Delawares, who play a minor part in the story, though. They are explicitly called ‘peaceful' by the movie commentary, making it more acceptable to leave them some land, it seems. However, even their village is just called ‘camp', giving it a merely temporary right to exist. In the course of the 1920 adaption, Natives are mentioning the word ‘wigwam' twice, referring to their homes, which are never shown, though. Instead, all introductions and the majority of action regarding Native Americans in the plot take place in the wilderness. Whenever located at a building, they seem out of place. All of this draws on the myth of the Vanishing Indian, which was an important tool to justify the displacement of Native tribes and to block out the sense of guilt coming with the elimination of Native cultures. The vanishing of the ‘Indian race', as promoted by the myth, made progress possible and was inevitable at the same time. The sentiment of the myth is perfected when, under a murky sky, Chief Great Serpent (Chingachgook) stands alone at the burial site of his son Uncas. Uncas' death implies the end of the Mohican tribe. Before leaving to remain alone with Uncas, the chief had said to his friend Hawkeye: “Woe, for the race of red men! In the morning of life I saw the sons of my forefathers happy and strong - and before nightfall I have seen the passing of the last of the Mohicans” (min. 1:10), indicating the rapid pace of the process of the Natives being “swallowed” - assimilated - by white America (cf. Deloria, Introduction 5).
4 Last of the Mohicans 1936: Indian Reorganization Act
Many things had changed between 1920 and 1936, when another adaption of The last of the Mohicans was released. First, American Indians were permitted to vote by the passing of the Indian Citizenship Act 1924. The clarification of their legal status gave them admittedly more rights, but it was also the lawful extension of the assimilation policies of the eighteenth century (cf. Lacy, The United States 91), or, how Fixico expresses it, the “formal naming of the wish for Indian assimilation” (Federal 385). Then, in 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act became applicable. It essentially ended the allotment policy and enabled tribes to reshape and to establish tribal governments and institutions, through which Natives started to feel like they had a chance of selfdetermination. However, the success of the IRA was weakened by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which “drafted tribal constitutions that were tailored to Anglo-American standards” rather than “allowing the establishment of governments that reflected Indian values and traditions” (O'Brien, Federal 44).8 Nevertheless, the IRA marked a new stage in Native American policy. As Fixico puts it: “The Indian New Deal [...] swung the pendulum of federal Indian policy back in a direction that favored tribes” (385f.). This tendency can be detected in the 1936 release of Last of the Mohicans.
[...]
1 “Indians” is a problematic term in itself, since it is the name given to the Native Americans originally and erroneously by Christopher Columbus, then used by the European colonialists, and it expresses a kind of power relation. The preferred term in this paper is “Native Americans”, but “Natives” and “American Indians” will also be used for variation and reading flow purposes; Native Americans are using the term themselves, for example in “American Indian Movement”. “Indians” as a name standing on its own will not be used.
2 Edward Buscombe argues that there is a “built-in ideology” in Western movies, which are informed by history and simultaneously re-form history. Both ways emphasize white “triumph”. “But if we want films that look not to the past but to the present and future of Indians, then we shall probably have to look to Indian filmmakers to produce them” (145).
3 Sharon O'Brien points out that this policy was the “most assimilationist measure of all” and by 1934, “as a result of this policy, two-thirds of the tribal lands had passed into white ownership.” (Federal 43, cf. Buscombe, ‘Injuns!’ 108)
4 Vine Deloria criticizes: “We find the classic statements of high-level policy in the presidential messages to Congress on Indians, in political party platforms, and in congressional resolutions. We rarely, if ever, find a simple statement dealing with the implementation of policy.” (Introduction 5)
5 Minute indications are always given in case of direct quoting and always refer to the movie concerning the particular chapter.
6 Kilpatrick argues that stereotyping of American Indians can be made “mental, sexual, and spiritual, the most meaningful of which is probably the mental.” (Celluloid xvii)
7 A contemporary critic writes: “However, someone gets firewater to the redskins and they take part in an orgy of blood and suggested rapine that was terrible enough in print but becomes unspeakable in a picture” (qtd. in Hilger, The American 34).
8 For a more detailed discussion about the IRA see Churchill, Fantasies xiv.