Between its production and restoration in 2012, it was shown only a few times — once in Los Angeles in 1920, and in Kansas City, Tulsa and a handful of other cities.
The film focuses around a love triangle. The lead female character is Dawn, played by Esther LeBarre, daughter of the chief of the Kiowa (played by Hunting Horse.) Dawn wishes to wed White Eagle (played by White Parker, son of Comanche leader Quanah Parker) but her father wants her to also consider the powerful and influential Black Wolf, played by Jack Sankadota. Wanada Parker (also a child of Quanah Parker) plays Red Wing, another woman in love with Black Wolf. The film features depictions of typical Plains Indian life, including a battle scene, traditional dances and bison hunting.[6]
Production
The film features an "all-Indian cast...shot in Indian Country",[7] with over 300 people from the Comanche and Kiowa tribes acting in the film, including White and Wanada Parker, children of Quanah Parker. The cast wore their own clothing and brought their own personal items, including tepees.[7] The film features the "Tipi with Battle Pictures", which is a tepee in the collection of the Oklahoma Historical Society. There are lances and tomahawks in the film which represent honors earned in war by the Kiowa.[7]Daughter of Dawn was filmed in May, June and July 1920.[6] The filming took place in the Wichita Mountains.[7]
The Daughter of Dawn was one of many docudramas that tended to romanticize Native American culture and lifestyle during the early 1910s and '20s. Other films of the period that boasted of all-Indian casts included In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914); Hiawatha (1913), shot by F.E. Moore's production company; The Vanishing Race, a 1917 film made by the Edison Studios; and Before the White Man Came (1920), which employed Crow Indians and Cheyenne Indians as actors.[8]
