Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 145

P.C. on the Frontier: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

137

the world he has shared with the Cheyenne. Sully thus combines features of the
thoroughly domesticated, caring, sensitive male ideal of the 90s (Stein 43) with
the most appealing features of the larger-than-life figures of American folklore.
Sully is the frontiersman refashioned as a suitable consort for an educated feminist.
In true mythic fashion, their attenuated romance is a gradual, but inevitable coming
together of opposites: civilization and wilderness, education and intuition, control
and freedom (Breen and Corcoran, 130).
The third important archetypal figure in DQMW’s re-refurbished frontier myth
is the Cheyenne medicine man, Cloud Dancing, who is a projection of 1990’s
politically correct attitudes toward Native Americans, attitudes which hark back to
colonial-era idealizations of the Noble Savage (LaFarge 23). This image was quickly
abandoned with the expansionists’ need to demonize Native Americans (Josephy
“Indian Heritage” 6; Reynolds 12). But in a recent spate of popular entertainments
this icon has returned in works such as “Dances with Wolves” and even Disney’s
“Pocahontas”, though it is still the case that “The list of prime-time tv series featuring
positive accurate representations of Native Americans is extremely b rief’ (Wilson
and Guittierrez 95). These may be attempts to present less ethnocentric views of
the role of Native Americans in the westward expansion, but we must also see
Cloud Dancing and his cohorts as the efforts of the predominately white male
television establishment to snare new ethnically diverse audiences. To support this
view, it must be noted that DQMW draws frequent and explicit parallels between
contemporary treatments of poltitical issues and its fictional representations of
these issues, i.e., the Cheyenne attacks on encroaching white settlers are explicitly
equated with the slaves’ struggle for freedom. The aged Cheyenne leader, Black
Kettle, tells a black Army officer that the Cheyenne are fighting for freedom, just
as the slaves did. The black officer appears stunned by this realization and later
refuses to fight against the Cheyenne. Similarly, in an episode focused on women’s
demand to vote in a town mayoral election, Grace, a black woman, indignantly
tells her husband (who, as a property owner, can vote despite his race), that “The
Civil War was about rights.”
Cloud Dancing is indeed the noble savage. Intelligent, magnetic and tolerant,
he is dignified, but not wooden. A fleeting exchange between Cloud Dancing and
Michaela’s female medical school pal (visiting from San Francisco and clearly
patronizing in her attitude toward the denizens of Colorado Springs) speaks volumes.
Michaela introduces the medicine man to her friend, who fist recoils in fear, and
then speaks to the Indian as though he were a retarded child. Cloud Dancing, his
eyes telegraphing both exasperation and amusement, answers her in appropriately
primitive English. He then turns to chat fluently with Dr. Quinn about medical
matters, bringing deserved chagrin to the city slicker. The audience sees a warm
and mutually respectful cross-cultural collaboration which is clearly more valuable