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For anyone out there who knows anything about Westerns of the 1950s, “Broken Arrow” will amaze
them if they’ve never seen it. In a word, it’s probably the most progressive Western of the 1950s,
even more socially conscious than “The Searchers.” This is the only 1950s Western I have seen in
which the cowboys and the Indians are both given equal time and both shown on equal footing in their
wants.

Stewart plays a cowboy who doesn’t believe the Apaches are evil. Despite the fact that the Apaches
and settlers are killing one another, he thinks the Indians might have a legitimate grievance and he
braves death by going to their stronghold and talking to Cochise, their famous and almost mythical
leader. He asks Cochise for peace and says he will act as the liaison between the Apache and the
white men. In the beginning, all he asks is immunity for mail carriers so that they won’t be killed for
delivering messages.

Director Delmer Daves handles the Indians with respect. Although Jeff Chandler, an obvious white
guy, plays Cochise, the character himself is given surprising reverence. Indians are finally given real
faces and emotions, a true step forward for a genre that used Indians as faceless fodder for the six
shooters of the heroes.

Even more amazing, unlike the revisionist cinema of today, the white men are not demonized in
retribution by the writers. In fact, “Broken Arrow” depicts reality as it has always been throughout the
eons of history. In the movie there are good white men and bad white men and good Indians and bad
Indians. Some of the white settlers are just as immoral as Geronimo and his gang.

Daves’ film is a daring venture for an era that, although postwar, was still very much idealistic about
its heritage, and that meant the cowboys were good and the Indians were bad. In fact, Native
American sympathy really didn’t reach Hollywood until Marlon Brando’s obsession with the topic in the
1970s, over two decades after this picture.

In the movie we see Stewart court an Indian woman, we see an Indian chief rationalize the choice and
befriend a white man and we watch an emotionally complex and compelling role-reversal as Cochise
becomes the progressive thinker and Stewart finds himself slipping into primitive instincts, and not
because of the Indians, but because of the actions of other white men.

In “Broken Arrow,” no ethnicity is blamed. Character’s actions define their weight of responsibility, no
matter what their ethnic background, which is in reality how it was for history. Yes, white settlers
displaced Indians, but there were peaceful men and women amongst the pioneers just as there were
peaceful tribes amongst the violent ones, though in my estimation the angry ones had many
legitimate reasons for aggression. But I’ll get off the soapbox.

“Broken Arrow” is one of the great Westerns of cinema. Relatively unknown today, but extremely
powerful.