If we believe Hollywood then we believes the western genre first told hold it represents the reality of Native American history. A stagecoach is traveling through a desolate valley, when the passengers suddenly and without provocation find themselves surrounded, threatened, and eventually attacked for no reason by “injuns” on horses carrying guns and bows and arrows. Movies of Native Americans traveling in large groups circling wagons ready to attack innocent people played a pivotal role in promoting the image of the savage untamed Native American. While at the same time, the white settlers were portrayed as moral humans only trying to protect their land and their family from the brutal and savage Native Americans bent on killing as many white settlers as possible.

Of course, there were conflicts and deaths, but very few were the result of hostility between settlers and Native Americans. When Native Americans tried to defend themselves and their land, settlers or troops attacked them. We learned from “Major Problems in the …show more content…
In Geronimo (1993) Hollywood’s Wes Studi, a Cherokee Native American was cast in the role of the legendary Apache chief Geronimo. The movie tells, albeit mostly from the white man’s point of view, Geronimo’s struggle against the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans during westward expansion. Another movie from class to give a historically accurate view of Native Americans is Smoke Signals (1998), a film written and directed by a Native American, and starring Native Americans. The light-hearted film provides a realistic portrayal of life on the reservation out in the middle of nowhere. This film is very different from films like Stagecoach (1939) that depicted the murderous savage Native Americans or the stoic, unsmiling Native American like Magua in The Last of the Mohicans