In Search of Ecopaganism 4

This is about early influences that shaped my image of 'the Noble Redskin'. We're all formed by early influences, though our responses to our physical/cultural environment is selective, idiosyncratic. I am of the post-WWII Baby Boom generation, the first TV generation. As a tot, I would sit entranced before the Tube (literally in-tranced), fascinated by the gray-toned imagery made up of dancing dots, oblivious to its sense. McLuhan may have been right--'the medium is the message (massage)'. TV was futurist ghost-world, made by the god behind the machine, a coercive stream of alien scenes and sounds you're helpless to field, so you trance-out. Fortunately, that strategy worked-- my fragile psyche was not overwhelmed, but it was insidiously, relentlessly programmed in ways I still can't entirely grasp. We're all programmed, early on, and there's not a lot we can do about it-- it's become 'us'. All we can do is try to override the stuff we deem bad or wrong, and will the better.

There was children's literature as well. The more affecting of it was in fairy tales, which had some numinosity about them, were meant to enchant. Do mothers know what they're doing to their child's soul, reading them these stories as they grow drowsy? And television did much the same, in similar relaxed conditions. Well, children want magic, wonder, adventure, marvelous places, amazing persons, more than reality could ever provide. This sets us up to be cruelly disappointed by reality contrasting with our programmed shining ideals and yearnings that won't go away.

Of the amazing persons I can recall, it was televised versions of Robin Hood, Zorro, Davy Crockett, and Superman that had the strongest effect early on. Robin Hood as played by Richard Greene and Davy Crockett by Fess Parker have endured as icons in my psyche. Both were heroic men of the forest-- one in medieval England, the other in frontier America, which might have something to do with the counter-pulls of English and American cultures I've always experienced. There were Indians in Disney's Davy Crockett episodes, and in other Disney serials, on the Mickey Mouse Club and the Disney Show. In the 1950s and into the 60s, westerns were everywhere in profusion, on evening television, in movies. Back then, we were closer to the 'heroic' era, and in literature, mostly pulp, and from the earliest movies, the western had been a major genre. As a kid watching TV, I saw a lot of back-lot frontier towns and California desert and hills. I never liked desert, but the rugged forested hills and mountains made a romantic imprint. Fortunately, our apartment development was surrounded by woods, cliffs, a meadow with stream, that I'm now grateful I had as an early influence, to complement that of Nature on TV!

Particularly affecting fare was Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and The Lone Ranger, both of which had Indians, with Tonto as the Lone Ranger's 'faithful sidekick' probably then the most salient Indian in the world reached by American television. Tonto, as played by Jay Silverheels, was dignified, intelligent-- though laconic, with Basic English only-- sort of a wooden, cigar-store Indian stereotype. But he was part of a heroic duo, though secondary. We had after-school B-movies on TV, some of which were westerns, some of the cowboys-and-Indians sort. There was also, for kids, Rin Tin Tin (a German shepherd) at Fort Apache, which was a stockaded fortress against savage Indians. So there was that stereotype, but over my early years, there were many positive presentations of Indians as noble, dignified, intelligent, and wise. 'Squaws' were invariably demure, modestly dressed, respectable helpmeets, but that was how respectable 'white' frontier women were presented, too-- it was the 50s' conservative ideal of womanhood. There was also the wise old Medicine Man-- always presented respectfully. I suppose he was my first acquaintance with that archetype-- Merlin came much later. The Indian regalia-- peace pipe, eagle feathers, headdresses down to there, fringed buckskin clothing with leggings and loincloths and armbands and headbands, painted shields, bows and arrows (like Robin Hood!), teepees, canoes, cayuses (horses)-- all of that, and the natural settings, were deeply imprinted on me. At the time, there was nothing else so romantically affecting, apart from fairy stories, which induced powerful romantic dream-states, but this was filmed, and shown on television!

As a kid, I of course had no way to separate this Hollywood fantasy from reality-- I didn't know the reality! It wasn't until later (covered in next shtook) that I began learning of the terrible things done by the White Man to the Indians. Even in school, we got mostly the Thanksgiving story and Pocahontas saving John Smith from having his head bashed-in with a war-club by appealing to her father, the stern chief Powhatan. And there was plenty about Indian attacks, kidnappings, disappearances (Roanoke Colony, for one).

But despite a glut of depictions of Indians as ruthless, relentless evil-doers, renegades, we didn't get the drunken, stupid Indian stereotype. And there was much that was valorizing, increasingly so-- but that had been around since the silent-movie era. We saw it all on B-movies, mostly from the 1940s, I think.

As for Indian religion, we got the wise elder on the cliff-top communing with, appealing to, the Great Spirit in the sky, with peace pipe, perhaps. Not incompatible with Christianity, as far as it went, and the only alternative to it available at the time, on TV-- that's important.

I never liked violence, except as sheer action, and so the western-town saloon brawling and gunfights out on the main street didn't appeal to me, nor the ferocious Indian attacks on innocent settlers, with valiant cavalry vanquishing them in the end. It was the numinous, romantic feelings of wilderness and the native inhabitants of it that made the deepest impression-- it meant something-- something good-- in a time, as I saw later, of rocket-like blasting into a shining modern Future (or maybe not), while we strove to free ourselves of the terrible Evil that afflicted the world (the Nazis, the Commies, the Nukes). Then something happened...