More Awesomeness, or John Wayne Part 2 - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

Hello from the Bronx, where Roy Rogers and Dale Evans endowed a children's hospital section. The same year they named Orange County Airport after John Wayne, I met Iron Eyes Cody at a Choctaw Pow-wow, near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Iron Eyes Cody was in early films with John Wayne, "The Big Trail" (1930), "The Big Stampede" (1932), "Stagecoach" (1939) and also later TV's "Gunsmoke" (1955) and "Wagon Train" (1957) according to IMDb, and was later known for the "crying Indian" in the Keep America Beautiful (PSA). He had just lost his wife then, of native descent, Bertha Birdie Parker, important in the archaeology and ethnography of California. Her brother, Arthur C. Parker, was the first president of the Society for American Archaeology formed in 1935 and recorded many sites in New York for the state. They were from the Seneca people in western New York. I wonder if Mr. Wayne had influenced them, beyond the screen, like NY's Frederic Remington, helping preserve the "Old West" and thereby helping other native peoples.

More Awesomeness, or John Wayne Part 2 - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com