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

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.