Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 56

54 Popular Culture Review portraying any scenes, and there certainly were many that could have been shown, that revealed the U.S. Cavalry attacking unsuspecting and unarmed Indians. Buffalo Bill did not even go so far as John Qum, who earlier toured with a "Wild Apaches Show," in showing "the Indians at home, engaged in social games, and as happy and contented as any white man."^ The Indian Village that existed alongside the Wild West Arena was a portrayal of Indian life; but it also provided cheap accommodations for the Indians, who slept on the straw covered ground through the winter and were assigned to eat at a table separate from the rest of the company in the mess hall.^ Since the time of the earliest settlers, the image of the Indian had been both horrifying and tantalizing to Americans. Early captivity myths emphasized the conflict between dark and light, Christianity and heathenism, in the context of sexual assault and murderous barbarianism. Although the first tales were bom of actual captures and rescues, the captivity narratives soon became a vehicle for religious and political sermonizing: . . . between 1682 and 1716 captivities were the only narratives about the frontier published in America. The captivity psychology made only one relationship between white and Indian conceivable—that of captive to captor, helpless good to active evil. Captivity psychology left only two responses open to the Puritans, passive subm ission or violent retribution. Since submission meant defeat and possible extermination. New England opted for total war, for the extirpation or imprisonment on reservations of the native population.® By the eighteenth century, another viewpoint was considered and some novels portrayed the Indian instead as the "Noble Savage," although his nobility never denied the p>ossibility that his untamed spirit might break lose in violence. Despite these views, up until the 1830s most American intellectuals regarded the Indians as having the potential for attaining equality with the white man through the process of education and social interaction. This attitude caused A.P.K. Safford, the Territorial Governor of the Southwest, to grant