Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 1984
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 4, No. 3, Summer 1984, pp. 184-85.
Abstract
Raymond William Stedman approaches the pervasive stereotyping of American Indians with the awe of the devotee of popular culture who was raised on stories of noble warriors and animalistic savages, but also with the outrage of a modern humanist who hopes to reveal and discredit demeaning images. This leads to an interesting dichotomy in the book as the author presents endless examples of insulting-but sometimes entertaining-Indian images from histories, novels, plays, films, and television. After more than two hundred pages of insulting, humorous, and sometimes wonderfully lascivious material, Stedman delivers a twentypage sermon on the evils of such material and calls on readers to reform and cease stereotyping. The author's own love-hate relationship with Indian stereotypes is reflective of the American obsession with the Native Americans that he describes in his book.
In chapters that are often humorous, but sometimes flippant and strained, the author introduces Indian sidekicks from Friday to Tonto; willing Indian maids and their white paramours; unwilling white maids and their red rapists; alternately noble, vicious, and vanishing Indians; and the back-to-earth noble savage of the 1960s counter culture. An exhaustive array of material is presented as examples of these various images.
The book, however, offers little analysis to interpret the innumerable examples. Readers should be aware that this is not the scholarly treatment that one might expect from an academic press. It does not compare favorably to recent works by Robert Berkhofer, Brian W. Dippie, and Richard Slotkin. The notes are usually discursive and the bibliography thin.
Illustrations are an integral part of such a study and they are one of the gravest weaknesses of this book. The author has compiled some marvelous illustrations, but unfortunately, they are not adequately captioned and they are often poorly arranged and reproduced.
Although this book fails to break any new scholarly ground, it will probably win acceptance with a more general audience. As popular history it will both entertain and inform the broad audience interested in Indians and pop culture. Accepted on those terms, Shadows of the Indian succeeds.
Comments
Copyright 1984 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln