Gary Parsons sez:
 
    The INdians WERE savage fighters and vicious and cruel torturers
    (there is good reason for the recurring Western theme  to "save
    the last bullet for yourself to avoid capture"). but then, so
    were lots of groups back then (and even today - have we learned
    nothing???)
    Gary Parsons
 
Have YOU learned nothing?  For starters, to talk about the 200-plus
Native Americans cultures as if they were all the same ("The Indians")
is grossly false -- there's as much difference between Pawnee and
Cheyenne (or Kwakiutl and Nez Perce, or Navajo and Iroquois) as there
is between divergent European cultures (say, Greek and Scottish
cultures) -- in some cases more.  Woodland tribes such as the members
of the Iroquois Confederacy practices kidnapping (and, in some instances,
torture), but other tribes -- notably a number of Plains tribes -- while
they took prisoners, treated them as honored guests and often adopted
them into the tribe.
 
You might just as well say "all Eurpeans are savage" and cite Slobodan
Milosovic as make such patently false claims about Native Americans.
 
And, quite beside this point, there is more -- much more -- to the
ways in which films construct the 'hostile other' as savage, brute,
and unthinking -- a process used on  Africans as well as Native Americans.
 
--Russell Potter
--English Dept.
--Colby College