It is not clear whether Ron Howard had been told about a 1907 silent film, 'Terrible Ted', which had an almost identical premise. The reviewer for 'The Moving Picture World' in 1907 described it in some detail; it was, after all, a short 792-foot one-reeler. (probably about eight or nine minutes, depending on the projector). Seemingly, just the idea of a kid doing all this gunfighting and Indian killing-it was a pretty violent film, though bloodless-was automatically funny to the reviewer: "The situations are extremely funny, as you may imagine-a boy of twelve years the hero of such hair-raising episodes."
The ad from Biograph subtitled Terrible Ted as "A Youthful Victim of Dime Novel-itis emulating Roosevelt in the Wild and Woolly West".
I don't know how much input Howard got on this-after all, he didn't spell 'Derring-do' correctly.
