Little Hawk, it seems to me that those shoot 'em up movies you saw in the 50s and early 60s must have been made a good deal earlier. Long before that, there was a cult developing about the "noble savage". As long as he wasn't a "half breed". You just couldn't trust one of them if he was half white. (Wonder who ever came up with some of those ridiculous notions that many people unquestioningly accepted.)

When I was a kid in the 40s and I and my brothers played 'Cowboys and Indians', the Indians usually won. And some very popular books were out there that fed into our fantasies.

There were also many songs about Indians in that genre at that time and earlier. Remember 'Red Wing'? 'Snow Deer'? 'Running Bear'?