The Indianized White Man and the Anglicized Indian: Imperial and Anti-Imperial Discourse in NBC's Daniel Boone , 1964-1970

Abstract

In 1964, NBC-TV, in collaboration with 20th Century-Fox Television, unveiled the popular, long-running series Daniel Boone, (very) loosely based on the exploits of this former Kentucky colonel. Stories about Boone's Revolutionary War exploits resonated after nearly two hundred years.In the 1780s, the historical Daniel Boone unwittingly became the model for the AngloAmerican New Man, a paragon of masculinity whose appeal was based on combining AngloSaxon intellect with Indian intuition and skill. This figure has prevailed in US discourse since James Fenimore Cooper's character Natty Bumppo, who was loosely based on Boone (Slotkin 512; Walton 51). The series Daniel Boone also incorporated another durable mythical figure, that of the Indian companion, in this case the fictional Chief Mingo of the Cherokees. Both the hero and the native are involved in the project of bringing to the wilderness; Mingo, much like Robinson Crusoe's Friday or the Lone Ranger's sidekick, Tonto, is, predictably, a junior partner in this enterprise. The series did suggest contemporaneous political implications: its depiction of Boone personified the United States during a period when the nation's assertion of world leadership was being challenged by the USSR. The series addresses the issue of American identity: Native and Euro-American identities intermingle, with Chief Mingo being at times more white than Boone and Boone himself Indianized. This study will vprimarily examine these two mythical figures, the and the Anglicized Indian, their historical and ongoing usage in popular texts, along with the occasional symbiosis obtained by combining these two tropes. It also notes how Indians are represented, that is, which Indians are depicted as and which are bad. The good Indians are the ones who assist the settlers; the bad ones side with the dastardly British. Imperial and anti-imperial rhetoric both permeate the series. Since colonization is largely an issue of land and who controls it, this must be considered as well. Most westerns seem to gloss over this issue, whereas Daniel Boone deals with the land and who should control it in a remarkably forthright fashion.Historical and Literary BackgroundThis study begins with a pair of fictional figures and their subsequent variations in US literature, film, and television. The first is that of the Indianized man; the second is that of the Anglicized Indian. Both are hybrids and are often paired in stories in which the two figures become increasingly alike, borrowing each other's best traits. In later variations, Euro-American and Indian aspects are fused into a single character.The pairing of a explorer and an indigenous helper probably emanates from Daniel Defoe's 1719 Robinson Crusoe, in which the Native, since he knows the lay of the land, is recruited as a scout for the colonist, becoming an apprentice man (Zackel para. 66; Hulme 46-47, 50, 53, 65). Defoe's Friday was followed by many similar figures in literature, most of whom help the European or Euro-American colonist explore and develop the New World. Later versions help a savior enforce Anglo-Saxon law and order, the prime example being Tonto, the Lone Ranger's companion in the 1949-57 ABC-TV series The Lone Ranger (FitzGerald White Savior 91-103).1In the post-Revolutionary War period, a new myth was required for a new nation. Even before the Revolution, Euro-Americans had found this image both attractive and politically useful (Deloria, 2-9). According to Richard Slotkin, US leaders were looking for a prototype male who would be uniquely American (294-306). The solution was to synthesize two apparent opposites: this New Man would have European (i.e., Enlightenment) intellectual capacities, but he would also have native physical qualities and instincts. He would be a rugged man, comfortable in the wilderness, a loner, an individualist, unencumbered by civilization and its pretenses (Naficy and Gabriel 46; Lewis 41, 175, 201). …