Although it only lasted a season Brave Eagle has a unique place among the fans of the western. The first television series to tell western tales from the Indian point of view. Two of the regulars were in fact American Indians.
But the lead was played by a white man Keith Larsen who was in the title role of Brave Eagle, Cheyenne chief. His wife was Kim Winona and his son Anthony Numkena both American Indians. You might remember Numkena. A few years earlier he was the little Cree Indian boy who "adopted" Mountie Tyrone Power in Pony Soldier.
Larsen's sidekick was the surviving partner of Wheeler&Woolsey, Bert Wheeler. Bert always provided a bit of comic relief and the generation of kids who watched the show had no exposure to him as half of a comedy team.
There was also a rival of Larsen's of course, a pretender to the war bonnet of chief Pat Hogan appropriately named Black Cloud because was always raining on Larsen's parade. In that testosterone driven culture Larsen always topped Hogan the way in the last century the Yankees always topped the Red Sox.
I think the show made a lot of white kids think a bit about the first inhabitants of North America. Adult type westerns like Broken Arrow, Fort Apache, and the aforementioned Pony Soldier were already doing that at the grownup level. But this show marketed for the kids made a big contribution for their education.
