When most Americans think about American Indians in November, it's probably as part of Thanksgiving pageantry: the Wampanoags who gave the hapless Pilgrims food during their first winter at Plymouth and taught them how to grow corn the following spring, the ninety Indians who attended the "first Thanksgiving" feast in 1621. You may not know that, ever since 1990, November has officially been "Native American Heritage Month" in the United States, a time to recognize "the rich ancestry and traditions" of the nation's first inhabitants. But Jeopardy!'s Ken Jennings has some reservations about the accuracy of our Native American knowledge. It's never too late to set the record straight!
The Debunker: Did a "Crying Indian" Alert America to the Evils of Pollution?
On Earth Day 1971, the nonprofit Keep America Beautiful launched one of the most iconic TV ad campaigns in history. A Native American man in traditional buckskins canoes down a river until he reaches a polluted modern metropolis. "Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country," intones narrator William Conrad in his distinctive gravelly voice. A passing car tosses garbage at the Indian's moccasined feet. "Some people don't," Conrad adds. A single tear rolls down the Indian's right cheek.
Today the ad seems corny, and its ethnic stereotyping simplistic at best. But at the time, the ad made a huge splash, and probably did change some litterers' hearts and minds. It's been parodied countless times over the decades since: on The Simpsons, on Friends, in the Wayne's World movies. The commercial's star, Iron Eyes Cody, died in 1999 at age 94. He had a long career playing Indians in Hollywood, opposite Western stars from John Wayne to Steve McQueen, and is even the voice heard chanting on Joni Mitchell's song "Lakota." His Los Angeles Times obituary remembered him as Oscar Cody of Cherokee and Cree extraction, the son of Oklahoma farmer Thomas Longplume Cody. He married an American Indian archaeologist and adopted two Indian sons. He was active in humanitarian work for Native American causes for his entire adult life, and was never photographed without his traditional Indian garb and braided wig.
But, as others had reported during the last years of his life, much of that was bunk. "Oscar Cody" had no Cree or Cherokee background at all. He was actually born Espera de Corti to first-generation Sicilian immigrants in Louisiana. But living for over half a century as an Indian endeared de Corti to the Hollywood Native American community, which awarded him a "First Americans in the Arts" in 1995, even though they added an asterisk about his "non-Native status." Dying with his secret mostly intact meant that Cody passed up his chance to get any similar awards from Italian-American organizations, and I can only assume that Columbus Day was very hard on him every year.
Quick Quiz: Chase Iron Eyes (a non-Sicilian Native American) ran this year as the Democratic candidate for the lone congressional seat in what fastest growing U.S. state?
Ken Jennings is the author of eleven books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.