The first movie consisting of an all-Native American cast was March 1913's "Hiawatha," based on the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem. This wasn't the first film on "The Song of Hiawatha:" Carl Laemmle's IMP Studio in 1909 had produced a one-reeler, consisting of whites smeared with bronze paint. IMP's movie was ridiculed for its actors and their acting.
1913's "Hiawatha" 40-minute version unfolded the entire Longfellow story while Laemmle's highlighted just the highlights of Hiawatha growing up. The updated movie's producer, Frank Moore, had for the past 10 years sponsored an open-air "passion play" on the poem, transporting a traveling troupe of Indians throughout the East and Midwest to great applause. Moore gave stage actor Edgar Lewis the director's chair for the film version.
"Hiawatha's" cast was made up of 150 members of the Seneca tribe residing on an Indian reservation in upper New York State. Jesse Cornplanter, a direct descendent of the 18th-century Seneca war chief and diplomat Cornplanter, was the lead actor. Once released, audiences saw a different version of the Native American from the films showing Indians constantly at war with cowboys and white settlers. In "Hiawatha," "...it was like a breath of fresh air," as one reviewer wrote, "to see real human Indians enacting before us an old Indian legend."
1913's "Hiawatha" 40-minute version unfolded the entire Longfellow story while Laemmle's highlighted just the highlights of Hiawatha growing up. The updated movie's producer, Frank Moore, had for the past 10 years sponsored an open-air "passion play" on the poem, transporting a traveling troupe of Indians throughout the East and Midwest to great applause. Moore gave stage actor Edgar Lewis the director's chair for the film version.
"Hiawatha's" cast was made up of 150 members of the Seneca tribe residing on an Indian reservation in upper New York State. Jesse Cornplanter, a direct descendent of the 18th-century Seneca war chief and diplomat Cornplanter, was the lead actor. Once released, audiences saw a different version of the Native American from the films showing Indians constantly at war with cowboys and white settlers. In "Hiawatha," "...it was like a breath of fresh air," as one reviewer wrote, "to see real human Indians enacting before us an old Indian legend."
