Century Film Project

This short “farce comedy” is interesting for a number of reasons. Although its depiction of Native Americans is likely to make modern audiences uncomfortable, it does display an aspect of Pueblo culture that is largely forgotten today. Having had their land stolen and their way of life destroyed, many Pueblos turned to the tourist industry to make a living, working in places like the “Harvey House” in Albuquerque and selling hand-crafted blankets and other items to white people on vacation. That is the setting for Mack Sennett, then employed at Biograph Studios, to make this vehicle for the teenaged Mabel Normand, later one of his big stars at Keystone. Mabel plays a ditzy and somewhat sexually transgressive young woman who misses her train and takes a up a flirtation with the local Pueblo chief. This angers her male companion, but also the local Pueblo women, who initiate a classic Sennett chase-sequence that ends with the white folks boarding the next train and leaving empty-handed. The whole story is interspersed with images of the Pueblo people doing their schtick for the camera, and several are used as extras, although the major roles went to Biograph players in dark-face. The enraged Pueblo women referred to in the intertitles as “suffragettes,” which is simply a bad joke at the expense of early-twentieth century feminism.

Director: Mack Sennett

Camera: Percy Higginson

Starring: Mabel Normand, Charles West, Frank Evans, Kate Toncray

Run Time: 6 Min, 10 secs

You can watch it for free: here.