#pawneeindians

Issue #1: Bad interpretation of the Pawnee look

In the more recent Western movies that feature Pawnee warriors, like Dances With Wolves, they over-exaggerate the large roach headdress look. While the roach was largely famous for being worn by Pawnee warriors, they weren't worn as much as Hollywood's interpretation. Movies nowadays lead you to believe that pretty much every other warrior wore a large lengthy roach. Many of them did, but more did not. The pics above show what the majority of them actually looked like. Even the ones who wore roaches, usually wore ones that were pretty small or short. If you encountered a Pawnee warrior during their hay day, they would most likely only have a lone-scalplock mohawk. Or if they wore a roach, it would look much like the one in the upper left corner picture.

The older Western movies got it wrong also. Back then they didn't care much for authenticity when it came to any culture outside of White people and Black people. Hollywood almost seemed to hate Natives, so much so that they wouldn't even let real Natives play the roles. Of course this extends into how they made the Indians look in the movies too. They gave all Natives a very generic look. They made all tribes from the Southwest look like Apache and Plains tribes look like Sioux or Cheyenne. Pawnee are famous for their scalplock look, but the old movies never even tried to touch on that authenticity. Pretty sad.

Issue #2: The evil Indians