ABSTRACT
Just a few decades ago, patrons of movie theatres and television shows found entertainment by regularly viewing that Hollywood staple, the Western. Silver-screen re-enactments of those golden days of yesteryear portrayed cowboys, gamblers, gunslingers, soldiers, hurdy-gurdy gals, and Indian slots of Indians. Over a hundred years of filmmaking has produced incredible distortions of Native Americans and their traditional life ways. Film reviewers of their day decried the gullibility of viewers who accepted these distortions as accurate re-creations of historical events, but this criticism is a bit off target. Archaeologists are presently utilizing innovative approaches in their investigation of historic battlefields, including those of the Indian Wars. Their data-based, impartial conclusions regarding how soldiers and Indians actually fought is a reality check for official accounts suspected as biased and for mythic popular beliefs codified by Hollywood storytellers. The sound era began in 1927, and almost immediately Hollywood brought Westerns alive with thundering hooves, gun shots, and Indian war whoops.
