Selling the Sympathetic Western: Taste, Independent Production, and the Treatment of Indigenous Peoples in The Indian Fighter (1955)

abstract: The Indian Fighter (André De Toth, 1955) was the first picture made by Kirk Douglas's independent production company, Bryna Productions, and is one among a series of mid-century westerns that cast Native Americans as sympathetic rebels in the fight against encroaching Anglo-European colonialism. This article examines how Douglas stood to accrue social capital by representing Natives in a sympathetic light and how the realities of independent production conflict with the film's professed higher ideals. I argue that Douglas and others sought to appropriate the rhetorical power of the Native American fight for liberty while ultimately perpetuating a system of economic exploitation.