From: "Gregory Jay" <gjay@csd.uwm.edu>
>
> Colleagues-
> I am currently doing research on silent westerns and am
intrigued
> by the different representations and conventions of identity of
Native
> Americans in the silent film era. I have done some examination
of this
> topic in nineteenth century dime novels and am interested in
how silent
> films both drew on these pre-existing norms and fashioned their
own
> models of how Native American identity should be portrayed. I
have found
> some evidence that early Native American representation in film
is not as
> monolithically racist as one might suspect. Does anyone have
thoughts on
> this topic or sources that might be of use?
>
>
> Thanks,
> John Ramsey
> University of California at Irvine
>
>
>
Dear John:
I have been doing some research in this area, starting with the
Mohicans adaptations. This led me to the Library of Congress to
look at D.W. Griffith's 1909 one-reeler based on Cooper. There is
found that Griffith's Biograph films contain a lot of interesting
material on race representation. For a panel on Black and Indian
representation in literature and film for the upcoming ASA
conference, I am doing a paper on Griffith's "The Massacre", a
two-reeler from about 1912. In it a returning Confederate soldier
goes west, where he witnesses a massacre of Indians by Yankee
Calvary that eventually leads to an Indian massacre of whites.
Griffith also did a "Ramona" that is somewhat sympathetic (he
actually played the male lead in a stage production in California
in his youth.)
Some of Griffith's Biograph films are available on cassette,
though their quality is not the same as the 16 mm prints at the
Library of Congress or the Museum of Modern Art. The Library of
Congress has listings of their holdings in this area.
Good luck,
Gregory Jay, Professor
Department of English and Comparative Literature
University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53201
Office phone: (414) 229-2710 Fax: (414) 962-3435
e-mail: gjay@csd.uwm.edu
http://www.uwm.edu/~gjay/