In both Stagecoach and Drums On The Mohawk, Ford places a special emphasis on the potential danger of rape that white women such as Lucy Mallory or Lana Martin faced if they were captured by the Indians. However, in 1939, it would have been impossible for Ford to say this directly in his films. Because of the censorship in Hollywood at the time, Ford could not even use the word “prostitute” in Stagecoach when Dallas, his female lead, was in fact, a prostitute. Similarly, the censorship rules forbade him from even using the word “rape”. Moreover, the prejudices against mixed-race relationships of any kind (even including…perhaps, especially including rape) made it impossible for Ford to do anything but hint at the horrors of such a thing as interracial rape. Perhaps because Ford began his career in the age of silent films, he was especially good at hinting in a way that made something clear to the audience without needing to use words. In Stagecoach, it is enough for Ford to show us Hatfield looking at his last bullet and then slowly pointing his gun at the praying Lucy Mallory for us to know why he is doing this. American audiences would have understood that Hatfield wished to spare Lucy the horrors of being a white woman captured by the Indians. The audience not only understood what Hatfield was about to do but strongly approved of it. Better dead than raped by Indians was the attitude. Similarly, Lana’s screams of sheer terror when she sees Blue Back are not because she fears he will “murder” her but because she fears she will be taken prisoner with all that would entail.

We should not be too quick to dismiss this fear of rape as exaggerated either. I have already explained that rape was and still is a weapon of terror used to show the men of one society that they cannot protect their wives, mothers, and sisters from the enemy. But rape was obviously also a direct attack on the women themselves. Women, we should recall, are largely responsible for creating the conditions for civilization by maintaining the home and raising children. Destroy women and you destroy the culture they maintain. Sexual assault on the women of an enemy culture often entailed torture and humiliation. Those who lived through this ordeal would, of course, be badly traumatized. In many cases, these women were not killed but returned to their homes and villages after they had been made pregnant by their tormentors. What would it mean to give birth to the child of the enemy who raped you? It would often mean the woman herself was sometimes shunned in her own community. “Why”, people would ask, “didn’t you kill yourself rather than submit to being raped?”. This “blaming the victim” for the crime of the enemy is often almost as traumatic for the women as what the enemy did to them. There are still societies in the world today where a woman who has been raped can be charged with a crime…the crime of allowing herself to be raped! However, I would not have you believe things are not changing. In 2008, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1820, which noted that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide”. This is real progress.

To return to our films, let me pose a question: despite what audiences in 1939 might have thought, what do we think when we see Hatfield preparing to shoot Lucy Mallory? Perhaps we ask ourselves “what right does this man have to do that? Shouldn’t the choice to live or die be Lucy’s?” Hatfield obviously has no intention of asking her what she wants. Ford has Hatfield shot just before he can shoot Lucy and at just that moment Lucy hears the sound of the bugle and knows they are going to be rescued. This sudden rescue at the last possible moment became so famous that it led to the widespread use of the term “here comes the cavalry” to mean “rescued at the last moment”. But was this also a way for Ford to reject the idea that a woman should be killed or kill herself to avoid capture by the Indians? As a Catholic, Ford would have found suicide to be unacceptable on moral grounds, but would he have thought the same about a “mercy killing” by Hatfield meant to save Lucy from gang rape, torture, and eventual death at the hands of the Apache? Moreover, did the Indians really do such terrible things to prisoners so as to make someone want to kill themselves rather than be captured? Let’s take a look at a brief excerpt from Ford’s film, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) to see if this was so.

Before screening the excerpt, let me remind you that I said that when I was a little boy I was afraid of werewolves, aliens, and Indians. This is the film that really made me afraid of Indians more than any other. The film stars John Wayne (of course) Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. (the two stars of Wagon Master). Here, they are spying on a group of Indians to find out how the Indians are getting modern repeating rifles.

The fact that these men would not help the two men being tortured even though they were very bad men bothered me as much as the fact the Indians were torturing them. Professor Tarlofsky simply does not think anyone should be tortured for any reason. I thought so when I was eight years old watching this movie and I have not changed my mind since. We are seeing a very dark side of John Ford in this scene, but we will see much darker in another film he makes eight years later which we will study in our next lesson.

John Ford is not the only director of Westerns to show us the cruelty of the Indians. Howard Hawks’ great epic, Red River shows Thomas Dunson losing the only woman he ever loved to an Indian attack on a wagon train, and fourteen years later Matthew Garth finds the woman he will love when he rescues her wagon train from a similar attack. In both attacks there is, again, an emphasis placed on the special danger women face from Indian attacks. Red River was released in 1948 and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon in 1949. One year later, another of the great Western directors, Anthony Mann, released his film Winchester ’73 (1950). The similarities to She Wore A Yellow Ribbon are striking. The story is about how a special rifle, a Winchester ’73 1 in 1,000, passes from one character to another in the film. You have read about this weapon in your homework. Anthony Mann named his film after “the gun that won the west”.

I am sure you recognize the star of the film, Jimmy Stewart, who plays the part of Lin McAdam. Lin and his partner are chasing a man named Dutch Henry Brown. Lin and Dutch are such deadly enemies that the only reason they do not shoot at each other on sight is that the town marshal has confiscated their handguns and rifles while the shooting contest is going on. Lin wins the shooting contest against Dutch, who says it is a shame to waste such a gun shooting rabbits to which Lin replies that is better than shooting men in the back, (We later learn that Dutch shot Lin’s father in the back and killed him, which is why Lin is so determined to take revenge). It appears Dutch and his men mean to make a fast getaway, so Lin prepares to chase them. However, Dutch has something else in mind as you will see in the next excerpt.

 *Scalping is the repulsive custom of removing the skin from the top of a human skull in one piece usually by cutting around the edges and then lifting the entire piece off by the hair. The scalp would then be dried or smoked to preserve it. Scalping was, indeed, originally an Indian custom. It was a way to prove that a warrior had killed his enemy. The European custom had been to take the entire head of a conquered enemy, but they adopted the scalping practice from the Indians because it was easier to preserve and carry scalps rather than entire heads.

Japanese samurai also took the heads of their enemies, but if it were inconvenient to take the entire head, they would take just the nose and upper lip of the enemy. In North America, however, whites were the first to offer “bounties” (cash rewards) for Indian scalps with the price ranging from $25-$60 per Indian scalp. In Western films, it is usually the Indians who are shown practicing scalping, but a few films were honest enough to show that this was also a custom (and trade) among whites.

In contrast to all the films about Indians we have seen so far that show the Indians at their worst, the film Broken Arrow (1950) shows a very significant shift in how the American Indian was portrayed in the American Western. This film is an early example of films that try to present a more balanced view of the conflict with the Indians. These films depict the Indian as a so-called noble savage*.

Cochise also speaks to Jeffords in clear, easy to understand English. This is very important. Every other Indian we have heard speak English has spoken it badly in some way, as Blue Back did in Drums on The Mohawk when he said, “Me go now”, or as the drunken Mohawk warriors did when they say, “burn house”. On the other hand, Cochise speaks English slowly and carefully but with complete fluency. Of course, this is because Cochise is being played by an English speaking actor, (Jeff Chandler), who actually went on to play Cochise in two more films. Cochise begins by stating he is the leader of his people and he does not lie to them.

He speaks with such sincerity that we do believe him, which is more than we can say about many of our own leaders past or present! Cochise has a forceful personality and appears to be an honorable man. Everything about how Delmar Daves films this scene favors Cochise. As Jeffords sits down the camera looks up at Cochise from a high angle. We literally look up to this man as Jeffords does. When he sits it is “Indian style” (which also happens to be “Buddha style” in your culture). He looks directly at the camera. This is a highly unusual camera angle. When a director films an actor this way it gives the impression that the actor is actually speaking to the audience in the movie theater. Directors only use this angle when they have a very important message for the audience.

Then there is the fact that this film is in color. There is a huge debate in film circles about whether the greatest westerns are in color or black and white. My answer is, of course, that both can be great, but that they do different things. When John Ford gives us images of Monument Valley in black and white, we feel we are transported back to a certain place and time. When Shane confronts Wilson in Shane we have almost a duel between black and white in a color film, but Shane, as I pointed out, is bathed in a soft golden light while Wilson is in a harsher light. This effect could only be achieved because the film was in color. But before Shane was bathed in that golden light in 1953, there was Cochise in Broken Arrow in 1950 bathed in the same golden light. In my humble opinion, the power of both these scenes greatly depends on the use of both color and lighting. The message to the audience is as simple as “white hat good, black hat bad”. The message is “golden light good”. It is a beautiful piece of filmmaking and it is used to fully humanize an Indian character for perhaps the first time in Hollywood History.

In our next and final lesson, we will see where John Ford takes us in two very different films about the Indians.