1. I use the word "Indian" in this essay since my reference is to conventional genre representations and constructs, not Native Americans.

2. The racial ideology of the film is disturbing in more ways than its depiction of American Indians as savages. Buck, the comic, cowardly male character, whines about his Mexican wife, Juliette, and her family, as well as the beans she always feeds him. Although Juliette is never seen in the film, she is characterized with the twin stereotypes of Hispanics: all her family members move in with them and they eat nothing but beans. Even her marriage to Buck contributes to this negative stereotyping: such a woman, the film implies, would not be a fit wife for Ringo, the Anglo heroic male. Chris, the Hispanic proprietor of the second stagecoach stop, is dominated by his Indian wife, whom he cannot control and who turns out to be a thief.

3. Many Ford scholars have commented on this and related points I make about the film. Stagecoach contains a number of formal motifs, including one of Christianity that is developed visually with the image of the church in Lordsburg and aurally with the parodic sound track version of "Shall We Gather at the River?"; hats play an important role in visually defining the characters; and the narrative is carefully structured around a day/night patterning. For discussion of these and related aspects of the film, see Place, McBride and Wilmington, Baxter, and Bordwell and Thompson. break