Westerns – and Native Americans – became popular in the early days of silent cinema. By the time of the silent Westerns, Native people had been herded into reservations. “This part of American history, of course, was really still ongoing at the time cinema was really being born,” said Jesse Wente in the 2009 documentary, Reel Injun. 

As noted by Angela Aleiss, early Film studios pumped out one or two-reel pictures at a rate of around 12 to 15 per month (a reel amounted to around 10 minutes). Portrayals of Native people – sometimes sympathetic and romantic – were inspired by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West vaudeville show, dime novels, and classic literature, such as James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. “The silent films were a mixed bag,” says Aleiss. “You had the savage warrior, the noble Indian, the ‘half-breed’. Then you had movies that very much said Indians were loyal.”

Director DW Griffith – best known for the landmark, KKK-glorifying epic, The Birth of a Nation – made 30 Indian-themed films. Thomas H. Ince – a pioneering producer dubbed “the father of the Western” – moved families of Oglala Sioux to his mountainside production village in Santa Monica.

Hollywood’s first Native American filmmaker was James Young Deer, who managed the West Coast base of Pathé Frères. He oversaw production of over 150 silent one-reel Westerns and enjoyed significant creative freedom. His films were quirky satires that subverted the already-traditional Western stories. Young Deer was also embroiled in Hollywood’s first sex scandal. In 1913, he was accused of introducing an actress into a sex-trafficking ring and then the rape of a 15-year-old. He fled to England but returned to the US, by which time his accusers were long gone. His career never fully recovered, though he did make the first film about the Osage murders – Tragedies of the Osage Hills. The film premiered in May 1926, just four months after the arrests of the men portrayed by De Niro and DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon.