“White Blood Turns Red”

Chapter four engages more directly with playing Indian in comic books, examining a host of titles in the 1940s and 1950s and afterwards that feature a white hero adopted by Indians or appropriating Indian ways. This depiction implements specific recurring characteristics: adoption by Indians, the white hero with Indian clothing or weapons, Indianness as strength and valor, the Indianized hero as upholder of justice on the frontier, and, in some cases, echoes of superhero conventions in a secret identity or sidekick. These stories not only engage in the frontier lineage discussed in previous chapters but also potentially reveal cultural values of the United States in the post-war years, especially concerning the construction and performance of gender, representations of nationalism and loyalty, and the construction of race and difference.

The White Frontiersman, Manhood, Domesticity, and Loyalty

Chapter two focuses on what might be considered the foil to the Indian: the white frontiersman. Specifically in the figure of Daniel Boone, the white frontiersman portrays a complementary ideal of white manhood to the Indian male, an ideal that may appear safer in terms of racial purity, but, like the contradictory dynamic of the Indian male body's potential for attraction and repulsion, possesses a threat of perceived regression into wild or savage conditions. On one hand, Boone represents a shining ideal of white manhood, yet his adoption by the Shawnee demonstrates a permeability of racial and national identification. While the Boone figure is fully reclaimed by writers and biographers for the American cause, other white frontiersmen might remain solidly on "the other side." Simon Girty, for example, represents that a white man can be "lost" to the Indians, and thus, white settlers and citizens must be on guard to protect their sense of racial and national "loyalty." This chapter, along with the previous one, lay the groundwork of the fantasy and ideology important for the remainder of the book.

Conclusion

The conclusion considers the power and persistence of playing Indian in American culture. From Daniel Boone to Captain America, from the frontiersman to the superhero, from the frontier to the city, playing Indian maintains a powerful presence in American popular culture, reflecting and shaping perceptions of race, gender, and national identity.

When Superheroes Play Indian

Chapter five continues the discussion of playing Indian in comic books, with the focus on superheroes in particular. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Plastic Man, Captain Marvel, Superman, and Batman play Indian. This chapter then examines Green Arrow’s Indian masquerade and its interaction with the social consciousness of Dennis O'Neil's Green Lantern. This chapter then considers Captain America as Indian and the repercussions of playing Indian for his role as national superhero and representative of U.S. identity. In Neil Gaiman’s 1602 (2003-04) and Tony Bedard’s one-shot story, What If? Featuring Captain America (2006), these reimagined visions of the Captain America mythos appropriate and perform Indianness in order to possess virile masculinity and physical strength. Furthermore, this appropriation of Indianness to produce heroic masculinity accompanies the comics’ conventions of superheroism. The white superhero as Indian encapsulates the major themes of this study and provides a fitting resolution for this book.

From the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century

Chapter three follows the lineage of frontier and Western fantasies from the nineteenth century to the twentieth via the comic book adaptations of novels like The Last of the Mohicans and comic depictions of frontier figures like Boone and Girty. Following in the line of late-nineteenth century dime novels and early twentieth century film, comic books inherited many of the tropes and conventions of the Western and frontier genres, including those of the white Indian and playing Indian. Multiple adaptations of The Last of the Mohicans, from the 1940s to the 2000s, testify to that story's persistent appeal. In the 1950s, a flurry of Boone comics demonstrates his popularity as an American hero while engaging in many of the themes and cultural implications that are essential to this book's focus.

The Indian Male Body and the Heroic Ideal

Chapter one examines the existence of the Indian male body as an object of admiration and repulsion. On one hand, the Indian male body is glamorized as a specimen of Classical beauty, an ideal of physical and aesthetic form. On the other hand, that Indian body possesses the potential for danger and physical harm. Examples such as Tecumseh, Uncas, and Francis Parkman's descriptions of Native men demonstrate this contradictory balance of admiration and repulsion, a dynamic that both embodies and disembodies the Indian male figure. This chapter shows how American art and literature in the nineteenth century attempts to neutralize the perceived threat of the Indian male body through artistic objectification of that body, an objectification that aims to construct an ideal for white manhood.

Introduction

The introduction discusses the connection between Native activism and popular culture as an entry into considering the recurring trope of playing Indian in American culture, especially focusing on comics. Comics provide a representative body of work for American popular culture, demonstrating how playing Indian circulates and is transmitted throughout American culture. A theoretical consideration of visual rhetoric, including Charles Peirce's semiotics, helps establish the unique nature of playing Indian in comics because of the visual nature of the medium. A consideration of whiteness and control of racial identity illustrates the contradictory dynamic of playing Indian.