White Fawn's Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Red Indians in America

A frantic child reports to the tribal chief that her father killed her mother. The tribe chases and captures the man, dragging him back for tribal justice.

"White Fawn's Devotion" is the earliest surviving film directed by a Native American. James Young Deer's ancestors were members of the Nanticoke people of Delaware. It was one of the earlier films shot in America by the French company Pathé.

This short film deserves recognition simply for its native roots, but also happens to be a pretty decent story with interesting sets and costumes. With no one credited, I do not know if the actors were native or not, but it seems quite possible they were (at least partially).

The short drama "White Fawn's Devotion" is primarily of interest for its director, James Young Deer, and its cast of Native Americans, who enact a drama of an interracial family that falls victim to a misunderstanding. The actual story has obvious similarities to many other short dramas of the era, but its frontier setting adds a dimension that a similar drama set in a city or suburb, without the cross-cultural interactions, would not have.

The story features a white settler, his Native American wife White Fawn, and their daughter. A conflict arises when the settler learns that he has inherited a large fortune, but must go east to claim it. White Fawn immediately foresees that this will force him to choose between two entirely different ways of life, and her reaction soon leads to a serious misunderstanding.

As this feature illustrates, in 1910 there were still some good opportunities in film-making for minorities. As a result, although much of the story is just a variant of a well-worn plot premise, the movie is still interesting to watch because it offers a worthwhile perspective on the cultural issues involved, rather than limiting itself to one family's problems.

Early film Westerns were often criticized for not being authentic. About twenty percent of the movies in the 1910's were cowboy and Indian-related pictures. Pathe Studios, a French film company that had opened a small production branch in Ft. Lee, N.J., wanted to correct that perception. Pathe hired actor and part-time film hand, James Young Deer, who claimed he had ancestors from the Nanticoke people of Delaware, to write and direct its Westerns. One of his first works, his earliest that exists, was "White Fawn's Devotion." This June 1910-released film is the first existing movie directed by a Native American.

Many Westerns filmed Indians as hostile warriors, attacking wagon trains and solitary farmsteads. There were many other movies at that time, however, that looked upon Native Americans in a more positive light, reflecting their stoicism and integrity, where they were constantly harassed by land grabbing whites. D.W. Griffith's early films on this subject dealt humanely with his native portrayal. In "White Fawn's Devotion," Deer develops a story in which an Indian wife is fearful that her white husband, inheriting riches back East, will take her and their daughter into the white's civilization and leave the life she loves. After seemingly committing suicide, the wife appears to have been killed by her husband after the spat, and their daughter tells the neighboring tribe of the killing, eliciting a knuckle gripping chase scene.

There is only a handful of existing Deer-directed films available for today's viewers; the remainder are considered lost. As a Spanish-American War veteran, he is buried in the Long Island National Cemetary under the name James Young Johnson.