White Fawn's Devotion

James Young Deer: White Fawn's Devotion (1910). The opening credit title card from IMDb.

James Young Deer: White Fawn's Devotion (1910) with Princess Red Wing* and James Young Deer. Photo and caption from Library of Congress, National Film Registry (2008), essay by Scott Simmon based on his American Archives dvd notes.

WHITE FAWN’S DEVOTION (Pathé Frères, US 1910)
White Fawn's Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Red Indians in America
    Dir: James Young Deer; cast: James Young Deer, Princess Red Wing*; rel. 18.6.1910.
    35 mm, 950 ft /16 fps/ 16 min, Library of Congress.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Phil Carli.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fort Lee, 14 Oct 2004

Richard Koszarski (GCM): "Pathé opened an American factory in Bound Brook, New Jersey in 1910, and established a local production unit the same year. Many of their films were westerns shot in Fort Lee, often directed by James Young Deer, and starring Young Deer and his wife, Princess Red Wing*. While Red Wing* (real name, Lillian St. Cyr) was an authentic member of the Winnebago tribe, Angela Aleiss, in her forthcoming Native Americans in the Movies, reveals that Young Deer was a make-believe Indian whose name does not appear on the Winnebago rolls (and therefore was not “the first native American filmmaker”). White Fawn’s Devotion is only one of many contemporary derivatives of The Squaw Man, the Ur-text of much early western fiction. Although it makes good use of Fort Lee’s natural wonders, only a New Jersey western would so emphasize the rigors of the Palisades. Horses, although easily available at many local livery stables, appear to have been used sparingly by Young Deer, his Indians being forced to chase their white quarry on foot." – Richard Koszarski (GCM)

AA: Very primitive. But of special importance as the first film made by Native Americans. Princess Red Wing* (who would soon play the female lead in Cecil B. DeMille's first film adaptation of The Squaw Man) was a Winnebago, James Young Deer was not, but since this GCM Sacile screening it has been established by Angela Aleiss in 2013 that he was a Nanticoke, belonging to Delaware Nanticokes, among "the Moors of Delaware": Angela Aleiss: "Who Was the Real James Young Deer? The Mysterious Identity of the Pathè Producer Finally Comes to Light" (Bright Lights film journal, 30 April, 2013).

Library of Congress: National Film Registry (2008)

"White Fawn’s Devotion (1910) James Young Deer is now recognized as the first documented movie director of Native American ancestry. Born in Dakota City, Neb., as a member of the Winnebago Indian tribe, James Young Deer (aka: J. Younger Johnston) began his show-business career in circus and Wild West shows in the 1890s. When Pathé Frères of France established its American studio in 1910, in part to produce more authentically American-style Western films, Young Deer was hired as a director and scenario writer. Frequently in collaboration with his wife, actress Princess Red Wing* (aka: Lillian St. Cyr), also of Winnebago ancestry, Young Deer is believed to have written and directed more than 100 movies for Pathé from 1910-1913. Many details of Young Deer’s life and movie career remain undocumented and fewer than 10 of his films have been discovered and preserved by U.S. film archives."

Scott Simmon: White Fawn’s Devotion
From the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF)
Treasures of the American Archives DVD program notes, by permission of NFPF and Scott Simmon

“White Fawn’s Devotion” is probably the earliest surviving film directed by a Native American. Released in June 1910, it is also among the first films made in America by France’s Pathé Frères, then the world’s largest film production company.

U.S. motion picture trade journals, in a battle both cultural and economic, had ridiculed the English saddles and gingham-shirted Indians in Pathé’s European-made Westerns. Pathé’s answer was to open a studio in New Jersey and hire as director of its Westerns a Native American, James Young Deer. After Pathé opened a Los Angeles branch, Young Deer would be promoted to its general manager.

Born in Nebraska of Winnebago ancestry, James Young Deer (whose name may be a pseudonym) had trouped the country with Wild West shows and circuses before landing roles in film Westerns some-times alongside his wife, Lillian St. Cyr (likewise a Winnebago, with a long career under the name Princess Redwing). For Kalem, Lubin, and other early companies, Young Deer also penned Western scenarios. In part because he was never given credit on-screen for any of the approximately 120 films he directed for Pathé between 1910 and 1913, James Young Deer has become a completely forgotten figure, and his films are impossible to attribute with certainty. Only about six are thought to survive in U.S. archives.

“White Fawn’s Devotion,” like almost all American Westerns before it, was shot in the East. As with several other Young Deer films (to judge from their plot description), it draws from the popular 1905 stage melodrama. “The Squaw Man” —about a Briton whose Indian wife sacrifices herself by suicide —but alters the outcome significantly. In “White Fawn’s Devotion” a Briton named Combs, his Indian wife, White Fawn, and their daughter live in a Dakota log cabin. When Combs makes plans to claim “an unexpected legacy,” White Fawn fears he is leaving forever with their child and attempts suicide. The daughter, finding her father bent over her mother holding a bloody knife, mistakenly reports murder to her Indian grandfather. After the chase by the tribe, Combs is set for execution at the hands of his reluctant daughter, until White Fawn —who has only wounded herself —arrives to set things straight.

For all its simple pantomime style, “White Fawn’s Devotion” arrives at a conclusion almost unknown in the era’s film or fiction: The interracial couple live happily ever after. The surviving print, preserved by the Library of Congress, is missing a few feet at its end, and Pathé’s publicity fills in the resolution: “The Combs take their departure and return to their home, for he feels he will be happier with his family on the plains than if he goes east and claims his legacy.” It was only when Young Deer reversed the sexes of the interracial couple that reviewers were outraged.

About (the unfortunately lost) “Red Deer’s Devotion,” which Young Deer shot in the West in 1911, “Moving Picture World” said: “Another feature of this film will not please a good many. It represents a white girl and an Indian falling in love with each other. While such a thing is possible, and undoubtedly has been done many times, there is still a feeling of disgust which cannot be overcome when this sort of thing is depicted as plainly as it is here.

”Between 1908 and 1912, Native American images were seen more widely on movie screens than ever again. In 1913, “Moving Picture World “reported that “Indian dramas ...are played out” and that film companies were hanging NO INDIANS WANTED signs. That is also the year that James Young Deer — who surfaced briefly in the British and French film industries — essentially vanished from the American movie business.

About the Preservation

A nitrate print of “White Fawn’s Devotion” was located in the New Zealand Film Archive and repatriated though the American Film Institute to the Library of Congress.

Further Reading

A chapter is devoted to James Young Deer’s film career in Andrew Brodie Smith’s “Shooting Cowboys and Indians: Silent Western Films, American Culture, and the Birth of Hollywood” (University Press of Colorado, 2003).

Editor’s Note

Recent research shows James Young Deer was a member of the Nanticoke Nation of Delaware and born in Washington, D.C. See Angela Aleiss’s article in “Bright Lights Film Journal.”http://brightlightsfilm.com/who-was-the-real-james-young-deer-the-mysterious-identity-of-the-pathe-producer-finally-comes-to-light/#.VuGMDEY3J7I

Scott Simmon is Professor of English at UC Davis. His books include The Films of D. W. Griffith (1993) and The Invention of the Western Film (2003). Simmon's informative essays have accompanied the NFPF Treasures DVDs as well as the Foundation’s free online release of Orson Welles’ recently discovered and preserved film  “Too Much Johnson.”

WIKIPEDIA: WHITE FAWN'S DEVOTION (as of 2020)

White Fawn's Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Red Indians in America is a 1910 American short dramatic silent film. Although a few writers believe the film features Young Deer's wife, Lillian St. Cyr, otherwise known as Princess Red Wing* as "White Fawn", the lead woman does not fit St. Cyr's description. The movie was shot in New Jersey at 24 fps.

White Fawn's Devotion is the earliest surviving film directed by a Native American. It was one of the earlier films shot in America by the French company Pathé. A reviewer in the New York Dramatic Mirror wrote that the film "proves to be interesting if we can forget the New Jersey scenery" and noted that "it is not quite clear where the devotion comes in, nor of what it consists.".

In 2008, the movie was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

When a settler in the Dakotas gets word that he is to inherit a large fortune, his Native American wife is upset. Believing that she will lose her husband if he returns East, she stabs herself with a knife. Her husband finds her and removes the knife, but their daughter sees him with the knife in his hand and her apparently dead mother. The girl, believing her father committed the murder, alerts the nearby Indian village. Several Indians then engage the settler in a long chase. When the settler is captured, the Indians intend to put him to death until White Fawn miraculously revives and informs the Indians of the truth. This ending, in which an interracial couple ends up together, is a rare occurrence for this period of film production.

Production

James Young Deer (also known as J. Younger Johnston or James Young Johnson), the uncredited director and writer of White Fawn's Devotion, was believed to be the first Native American film director. His ancestors were members of the Nanticoke people of Delaware. Young Deer was hired by Pathé Frères as a director and scenario writer and frequently worked in collaboration with his actress wife Lillian St. Cyr, also known by her stage name Princess Red Wing*. Out of the more than 100 short and a few feature films he made, White Fawn's Devotion is one of fewer than 10 films of Young Deer's to have survived. 

 

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* P.S. 4 Aug 2021: a comment to this blog by Anonymous: "The lead female in White Fawn's Devotion was not Red Wing. It was actress silent screen Lucille Younge."