The first thing that grabs you about Green Arrowhead is his name. Did Ace Periodicals not know about that other archer named Green Arrow?Or were the editors over at Ace just having a little fun?

What is known was that the folks at Ace were desperately trying to come up with comic books that would sell. By 1951, they had a successful line of romance comic books but not much else. Indian Braves, a new title they were trying out, included three lack luster back-up features included Wild Eagle, Swift Elk and John Thundercloud, each a heroic chief of a different tribe. These stories were remarkable only for being set in an Old West that included Indian reservations.

But the cover feature of Indian Braves was unique, in a decidedly copyright infringement sort of way. Green Arrowhead was a Choctaw warrior who was known far and wide for his, well, green arrows which he shot with unerring accuracy and speed. His “origin” story in that first issue of Indian Braves (3/51) shed more heat than light.

Green Arrowhead’s Origin

Befriended by a philosopher named Ben Harden, Green Arrowhead learned the ways of the white man as a boy. Later, Gallant Hawk—the Choctaw chief and Green Arrowhead’s father—was duped into a war with the cavalry by a greedy gunrunner who hoped to sell his product to the Choctaws. Gallant Hawk was killed in the ensuing battle, but not before he confessed he was wrong to distrust the white man. Green Arrowhead subsequently declined the role of chief, ceding it to his younger brother, and devoted himself to encouraging peace between the settlers and his people. Questionable racial dynamics aside, the initial tale never explained why the Choctaw warrior started using green arrows in the first place or how he got to be such an exceptional archer.

Adding another parallel’s to DC’s Green Arrow (still a back-up feature in Adventure Comics and World’s Finest at the time) was the addition of a blond white boy as a sidekick in issue three. A ruthless and land

hungry cattle baron, enraged at Sam Morgan for leasing reservation land from the Choctaws for grazing sheep, set fire to his homestead. Sam and his wife died, but Green Arrowhead arrived in time to save their adolescent son, Sandy. An orphan with nowhere to go, Sandy was adopted by the Choctaws, learning Indian ways, including skill with a bow and arrow. The Choctaws formally renamed the boy Little Bear. He and Green Arrowhead became blood brothers and embodied an idealized bond between once warring peoples.

Indian Braves only ran one more issue. It’s tempting to speculate that DC put a stop to it, but a later Ace title, Space Action, a standard space opera anthology with no plagiaristic complications whatsoever, was cancelled even more quickly. The retro-continuity freak in me would like to think that young Sandy grew up to have a daughter who married into the wealthy Queen family. Generations later, a young blond-haired man named Oliver remembers tales his grandmother used to tell of a fellow named Green Arrowhead and gets an idea…

But that’s the fiction writer in me. For purposes here, Green Arrowhead is just a mildly interesting Native American hero of the Old West. But you’ve got to love his name!

Mark Carlson-Ghost