Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 56
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Popular Culture Review
portraying any scenes, and there certainly were many that could have
been shown, that revealed the U.S. Cavalry attacking unsuspecting
and unarmed Indians. Buffalo Bill did not even go so far as John Qum,
who earlier toured with a "Wild Apaches Show," in showing "the
Indians at home, engaged in social games, and as happy and contented
as any white man."^ The Indian Village that existed alongside the
Wild West Arena was a portrayal of Indian life; but it also provided
cheap accommodations for the Indians, who slept on the straw
covered ground through the winter and were assigned to eat at a table
separate from the rest of the company in the mess hall.^
Since the time of the earliest settlers, the image of the Indian
had been both horrifying and tantalizing to Americans. Early
captivity myths emphasized the conflict between dark and light,
Christianity and heathenism, in the context of sexual assault and
murderous barbarianism. Although the first tales were bom of actual
captures and rescues, the captivity narratives soon became a vehicle
for religious and political sermonizing:
. . . between 1682 and 1716 captivities were the only
narratives about the frontier published in America.
The captivity psychology made only one relationship
between white and Indian conceivable—that of
captive to captor, helpless good to active evil.
Captivity psychology left only two responses open to
the Puritans, passive subm ission or violent
retribution. Since submission meant defeat and
possible extermination. New England opted for total
war, for the extirpation or imprisonment on
reservations of the native population.®
By the eighteenth century, another viewpoint was considered and
some novels portrayed the Indian instead as the "Noble Savage,"
although his nobility never denied the p>ossibility that his untamed
spirit might break lose in violence. Despite these views, up until the
1830s most American intellectuals regarded the Indians as having the
potential for attaining equality with the white man through the
process of education and social interaction. This attitude caused
A.P.K. Safford, the Territorial Governor of the Southwest, to grant