Who Will WingtheStagedriver?

-Two months ago the Association on American Indian Affairs launched a committee to keep Hollywood from maligning one of its oldest standard villains, the red man (TIME, Dec. 19). Last week an association member, Critic-Novelist Bernard DeVoto, noted his dissent in Harper's magazine.

Pressure groups, DeVoto recalled, had scared Hollywood into disqualifying almost all minorities from badman roles, and the drive to salve the feelings of friends of the Red Indian was the last straw. Said he: "I protest this new proposal as a lover of horse operas ... If the committee puts its [plan] over, who is going to wing the stagedriver with an arrow and who is going to burn the wagon-train? ... I want that Apache in a Sioux warbonnet to be a hound from hell ... I want the cussed redskins to crawl toward the waterhole in their proper persons as we have come to love them . . ."

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