Cheyenne Autumn is a film of contrasting viewpoints. On one hand it tries to sympathize with the Native Americans but at the same time it gives little value to their lives. The film shows how unfair they were treated but does so unfairly. It is important to view for our course because it shows how Hollywood can try to portray Native Americans in a light that is much better then the previous portrayals but still miss the mark.
             The opening scenes are meant to show how proud and noble the Native Americans are as a people. They wait on the government officials until the chief collapses and even then he refuses help. At the same time the two main American Indians carry around a piece pipe with them wherever they go and still speak with the Indian speak that is so prevalent in John Ford movies. The soldiers are made out to be unsavory characters because they show how little they car for the Indians. This is apparent by how the character "Tom Archer" refers to them as being, "...soldiers from their first slap on their ass." He is saying that they are savages from a young age on and he was trained into being a savage of sorts, a soldier. This seems to be a way of excusing his savagery.
             The American Indians, fed up with the no show by the government fat cats, decide that it is time they went back to their own land. The land the government has set aside for them is not good for much and they are dissatisfied by their treatment. The filmmakers were showing how the American Indians were being misled and treated poorly from the government. At one point the character, "Little Wolf," portrayed by Ricardo Montalban says that the white mans words are poison. He says when he learned to speak the white mans language it was not filled with so much poison. He can speak with wisdom but not with proper English.
             Cheyenne Autumn is an interesting movie that shows a transitional period in movie making. The filmmakers tri...