Who were the Indians of the Old West? Everyone knows them - the hawk-faced men with braided hair and war feathers, their copper skin stretched over high cheekbones. The tribal names are familiar too: Comanche, Cheyenne, Sioux, Kiowa, and others - all resonant of fierce valour, calling up images of painted horsemen with lances and bows. To most whites they represented the model of all Western Indians: the men trained from birth to hunt and fight; the women raised to sustain the warriors, sharing in celebrations of victory or slashing their bodies in moments of grief. For some tribes these images were true, but only partly true. For the Western Indians as a whole, they were only the most visible and spectacular manifestations of a broader, more complex story.