The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

Chapter 3 discusses the various way Indians exist in “real life” North American society (53). King argues that there are three types of Indians—“Dead Indians, Live Indians, and Legal Indians” (53)—which he will discuss throughout the chapter.

Dead Indians is an imagined idea of how Indians exist and behave, assembled from “the stereotypes and clichés that North America has conjured up out of experience and out of its collective imaginings and fears” (53). King calls these images a simulacrum, or “bits of cultural debris—authentic and constructed”—that represent “something that never existed” (54).

These images of Indians often consist of stereotypical clothing and accessories, like “war bonnets, beaded shirts, [and] fringed deerskin dresses” (54), with little consideration of the “truth” of what these accessories signify or whether Indians would actually wear them (54). The Dead Indians image can be found throughout American culture and is often used to sell products, such as “American Spirit cigarettes” or “Crazy Horse Malt Liquor” (57). King also notes that real-life Indians often have to dress like Dead Indians if they want Whites to accept their Indian identity as authentic.

While the image of Dead Indians is often used to market products to Whites, most Whites tend to outright ignore “Live Indians,” a term King uses to refer to any living Indians in North America.