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Badass Native
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Badass Native (trope)

"Don't plan to bind or banish ya, old ghost. Just gonna kick your ass up between your ears."
— Joseph "Injun Joe" Listens-to-Winds to Shagnasty,note  Turn Coat (2009)

Many indigenous people have a tradition of hand to hand combat using traditional weapons. When they're defending their village from an invading tribe or colonial soldiers, of course they're badasses. No matter what era you're in, if you live in the Americas, Oceania, or sub-Saharan Africa, indigenous people will be badasses, whether they're wielding spears, bow and arrows, or hatchets. Rarely seen in the rest of the world, though. The American version of the Badass Native tends to wear Braids, Beads and Buckskins. Will often be magical.

Overlaps with Noble Savage and Hollywood Natives, and in more specific contexts with The Savage Indian (in the Americas) or Scary Black Man (in Africa and Australia). See also Proud Warrior Race Guy. Likely to be The Big Guy.

Example subpages:

Other examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Aquaman
    • Aquaman's illegitimate Inuit son, Koryak, inexplicably has Mera's ability to turn water solid without freezing it, which he uses to lethal effect by creating sharp and or heavy weapons.
    • Ya'Wara, a Tapirape who has to defend the Amazon rain forest to pay off the debt of being saved from a plane crash. She can telepathically communicate with jaguars the same way Aquaman does with fish.
    • Sky Alchesay is from a reservation in Arizona, hunting the skin walker killed her mother. She can speak to the dead from the Ghost Lands, channel energy from the place offensively, enhance the abilities of the living, or perform extra dimensional travel through it.
  • Arak: Son of Thunder: Arak is a Native American warrior who is the equal of any knight in Charlemagne's court.
  • The Butcher: John Butcher is a Lakota man with ten years of experience in military intelligence and exceptional skills in martial arts. He is also an ally of Green Arrow.
  • Captain America
    • Jesse Black Crow, "Injun Joe", a Navajo warrior paralyzed from the waist down, a crow spirit will periodically grant him the ability to walk again, at which point he displays combat abilities comparable to Captain America. The crow spirit might grant Black Crow any number of super human abilities, including super human strength up to ten times that of Cap's, running speed just shy of a cheetah's, instantaneous reflexes, various forms of telepathy, Power of the Storm, Super-Senses, teleportation, Thinking Up Portals and making Thomas Fireheart behave himself.
    • Joe Gomez, Chiitaska, Captain America of the Kickapoo Tribe, was able to defeat Bulldozer of the Wrecking Crew using construction equipment, albeit at the cost of Joe's own life if not for Steve Rogers rescuing him. Gomez went on to construct his own Captain America shield, which doesn't break the laws of physics like Steve's but can still stop bullets.
  • Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen: Jay Little Bear was a Native American marine who was probably the best soldier in the squad after Kelly and often acted as Kelly's second-in-command. He sported a Mohawk haircut and carried a bow and arrow into battle.
  • Daredevil
    • William Lincoln, Crazy Horse, was a Cheyenne mobster as physically imposing, in his own way, as the Kingpin of Crime Wilson Fisk himself, with the added wrinkle William was believed to be legitimately insane. Fisk gravitated towards and partnered with Lincoln during his rise to the top of New York's criminal underworld. Once Wilson had secured his power base, however, he decided he could increase his cash flow by projecting the allusion of a legitimate businessman to the uninformed, and murdered William, as Crazy Horse's violent insanity was a hindrance to that goal.
    • William Lincoln's daughter, Maya Lopez, was born deaf but was born with a photographic memory and the ability to perfectly mimic any muscle movement she witness, even matching the volume and intonation of sounds she could not hear, as long as a human was making them. Maya trained to keep herself at physical peak while short cutting things like "technique" and "discipline" to win a gold medal in boxing at the Special Olympics. A medal that was then stripped of her, as her talents clashed with the spirit of the Special Olympic Games, though she was encouraged to try her hand at the standard Olympics. Little did Lopez realize Wilson Fisk was conditioning her to excel at violence and become desensitized to death, so that Maya could be activated has an Emergency Weapon if Fisk every found himself backed into a corner.
  • Lobo, the Side Kick of Tex Morgan, a Blackfoot survivalist, is so named because he has the ability to communicate with a command wolves. He's not afraid to use this trick against his enemies, but even without it, he's about a physical equal to Tex Morgan himself, only being a bit more sentimental and compassionate, so Lobo doesn't kill as many people.
  • Red Wolf
    • Red Wolf of the Crow Nation proved out matched by Tex Morgan, but he was able to outwit and force the villain of the story, Cleg, to retreat. He probably would have defeated Cleg if Red Wolf wasn't convinced all white men were directly responsible for Cleg's crimes, and that Morgan's partner, Lobo, had to die for associating with a white man.
    • In Black Rider #231, the hero is hired to capture Red Wolf Lobo Vermelho, the last warrior of an unnamed tribe who were largely killed off by white settlers. Red Wolf waged a one man war against Magnate Richard Norton to protect what little land his people had left, and was able to fight the Black Rider himself to a standstill, if partially because the Black Rider refused to kill such a man, and in fact eventually took Red Wolf's side.
    • William Talltrees, a Cheyenne warrior who took up the mantle of Red Wolf after his family was murdered by Taurus of the Zodiac Cartel. He went on to battle the Rat Pack and even the Super Skrull, thanks to the wolf spirit Owayodata helping Tallltrees gain a degree of super human physicality, and also by way of befriending Avengers like Tigra. He also trained wolves, often being accompanied by one named Lobo in battle.
    • Johnny Wakely takes the place of William Talltrees in wild west throwback stories that still want to use the Cheyenne Red Wolf. He doesn't have the super human strength, speed and endurance of Talltrees, but otherwise has all the same skills as a warrior, also trains wolves, and is accompanied by one in particular named Lobo.
    • Thomas Thunderhead, the grandson of Johnny Wakely, was also taught how to achieve super human abilities as Red Wolf, Super-Senses in Thunderhead's case, along with the ability to summon both a coup stick to his hand and a supernatural wolf named, of course, Lobo, to his side. He also made use of elm powder to make his opponents lose their lose their balance.
    • The Valley of Doom's The Red Wolf was a New Mexican Cheyenne of the 1880s whose tribe found themselves deposited on Doctor Doom's Battle World and forced to defend themselves against Roxxon, who had adapted from oil drilling to illegal river damming and silver mining. This lead to him personally engaging the likes of Turk Barrett, Elektra, Grizzly and Bullseye, surviving against them longer than his world's Steve Rogers and Bucky, albeit with assistance from Black Widow.
  • Shaman's Tears: Joshua Brand was chosen to be the champion of Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit of the Sioux.
  • Spider-Man: Thomas Fireheart aka the Puma, Human Weapon developed by generations' worth of effort by the secretive New Mexican Kisani tribe. A foe-turned-ally of Spider-Man, Fireheart is trained in martial arts and can transform into a human-puma hybrid with great strength, speed, agility, and senses.
  • The DCU has the Super-Chief, whose magical meteorite necklace gives him the "the strength of a thousand bears, the speed of a thousand running deer, the keen senses of the wolf nation, and the power in his legs to leap higher than the tallest trees in the forest"...but only for an hour. In 52, that last tidbit dooms the latest Super-Chief since his enemy has the power to manipulate time.
  • Thunderbolts: Warren Ellis's run featured minor Marvel hero American Eagle, a Navajo, who proved himself to be this trope by curb-stomping Bullseye.
  • The Ultimates (2024): The Ultimate Hawkeye is a Native American teenager named Charli Ramsey who recovered Clint Barton's abandoned gear and joined The Team in his stead, being a Master Archer who's effectively a One-Man Army thanks to Tony's tech.
  • Wonder Woman
    • Cura, an Inca hunter and warrior from the secret four peak city of the Andes doesn't have the super human abilities of the Amazing Amazon, but she can still handle a bow "as well as any boy" and throw her speak harder than any other warrior of her tribe. She's also skilled with a sword, nearly slaying the villain of the story if not for the sake of Wonder Woman, who wanted to question him.
    • DC Future State and DC Infinite Frontier take the "indigenous tribe" approach towards the "Amazons of the Amazons" from colonial European myths, who are called the Esquecida in this iteration of the DCU. The mightiest, though not the brightest is Yara Flor, whose Semi-Divine nature lets her shrug off exploding cars, and swords swung by gods, though she still feels pain despite the apparent lack of damage. Her Golden Boleadoras can also do something close enough to each of the previous Wonder Girl's lassos. Where Yara really excells is as a tracker, at least in the Rain Forest, despite not having lived their all that long. In DC Future State, she's able to naviage the Rain Forest despite Caipora literally reversing the position of every plant in it, while in DC Infinite Frontier, Diana calls Yara the best tracker Diana knows.
  • X-Men:
    • John Proudstar, a.k.a. Thunderbird, an Apache, tried to be this trope as one of the early X-Men, but his extreme temper (he was the resident hothead of a team that included Wolverine) led to him dying on his second mission. But what a death: punching out a fighter jet. Mid-flight. One of the few comic book deaths that's actually stuck... at least, until the Krakoan era, where John is back and is still carrying one hell of a chip on his shoulder.
    • James Proudstar a.k.a. Warpath from X-Force. Originally a New Mutants villain, he wasn't just a competent fighter but had contingency plans in place in case he did start losing a fight. Fall back plans that kept Wolverine at bay long enough for Warpath to capture Professor X. Joining the X-Men/X-Force, it's revealed he has the potential to become far stronger than his brother John Proudstar was, perhaps topping out around Colossus, after Piotr had his strength enhanced...and also to fly, or at least glide, for some reason.
    • Alpha Flight
      • Snowbird is an Inuit demigoddess tasked with keeping the gods of death in decay from encroaching too far into the mortal realm. And she laughs at mortal weaponry, at least when it's turn on her. Use it on her charges and things might get ugly.
      • Michael Twoyoungmen, Shaman, a Sarcee surgeon who is capable of performing...shamanistic magic. Initially as last chance when conventional medicine fails, Shaman has proven capable of doing many off balancing and outright harmful things in combat, given his intimate knowledge of human phsiology.
      • Elizabeth Twoyoungmen, Talisman, Michael's daughter, has a Coronet of Enchantment that basically forces her to become a badass by drawing from lingering mystical energies on Earth and pulling from several worlds' worth of knowledge to tell her what to do with it.
    • Danielle Moonstar, a.k.a Mirage, a Cheyenne, was already an accomplished hunter and tracker before Professor X came calling, but as she had to learn the lesson of team work or die to the monster than apparently killed her lesson, she initially ended up as a hospitalized victim of her nemesis who had to be saved by the New Mutants. Learning her lesson has allowed her to become one of the more independently powerful New Mutants, however.
    • Forge, initially a war criminal, he became an atoner, trying to help steer the US government in better directions that would benefit both of his people, the Cheyenne, and the x-factor gene mutants. Forge's mutant gift allows his to, eventually, construct anything he wants to out of whatever his available, pushing him to find and assemble the necessary materials. And what Forge usually wants is a gun to shoot something. Forge is also naturally gifted in shamanistic magic, though he hates it, only resorting to it when all other options are off the table.
    • Lucas Bishop is an Australian Aboriginal with a BFG and the ability to redirect energy attacks back at his enemies. He also survived growing up in a bad future.
  • Moonstalker in Topps Comics' Zorro series. Moonstalker, a California Indian who's watched his people die...who's seen his culture systematically destroyed...decides to take aim at all his enemies. Moonstalker forges an impressive bow capable of firing multiple-armament arrows, all capable of devastating, explosive potential.

    Comic Strips 
  • Dick Tracy: Nah Tay was a Native American from Ecuador who worked for Mr. Bribery. One of his specialties was shrinking the heads of Bribery's victims.

    Film — Animation 

    Film — Live Action 
  • In Apache, Massai, the last Apache warrior, is a One-Man Army waging a guerilla war against the entire US Army, and usually winning.
  • Filipe Camarão and his Potiguara tribesmen in Batalha dos Guararapes are a Brazilian real-life version of this trope, serving as part of La Résistance against the Dutch invaders. Unusually, they are also a combination of this with Church Militant, since they embraced Catholicism and consider the Protestant Dutchmen "heretics".
  • Mani (Mark Dacascos) from Brotherhood of the Wolf. A mid-18th century Mohawk who befriended French naturalist Grégoire de Fronsac in the American colonies and followed him to France after his tribe was wiped out. In addition to kicking tons of ass with martial arts, he has much better results in catching the Beast with the traps he sets up with Fronsac than what about a hundred men tried with rifles in their months-long hunt.
  • Gooch, a huge ex-con just released from prison at the beginning of Dance Me Outside, plays up to this trope.
  • A villainous example in Death Ring. One of the Egomaniac Hunters stalking Matt on the island is a Native American known only as 'Apache'. He hunts Matt armed with a spear and proves to be a Scarily Competent Tracker.
  • First Blood. Though not on the same level, this is one metaphor of the film. Our protagonist survives in the woods against a well-equipped military armed with only a bow and his own wits. It is even mentioned in the film that he's half Cherokee. And does this quote remind you of anything?:
    I could have killed them all. I could have killed you. In town you're the law, out here it's me. Don't push it. Don't push it or I'll give you a war you won't believe.
  • The Ice Road: Tantoo, one of the film's badass drivers, is introduced being released from jail following a protest her people, the Cree, are staging ("We’re gonna keep doing it until you get off our land.").
  • The title character in Navajo Joe has this, being proficient in firearms and melee weapons and single-handedly whittling down a rival's gang.
  • Prey (2022) has many of those in a Comanche tribe, including protagonist Naru, who turns out to be an Action Girl capable of fighting the Predator.
  • Aila, from Rhymes for Young Ghouls, is a less racist or stereotypical example of this trope, though she's most certainly both First Nations and extremely badass.
  • Komaram Bheem from RRR' — a fictionalized version of a real-life revolutionary — is part of the indigenous Gond tribe in colonial-era India. His first scene shows him wrestling a tiger and almost winning, he can tear ropes and chains apart with his bare hands, and he Does Not Like Guns, preferring to use rifles as bludgeons. He eventually joins with soldier Alluri Sitarama Raju — a badass in his own right — to wreak absolute havoc on the British colonizers. Subverted somewhat, in that Bheem is a sweet, dorky, lovestruck Nice Guy when not in battle.
  • Victor Joseph in Smoke Signals subverts this trope; he has a "stoic face" to look badass.
  • Through Black Spruce: Will is skilled with a rifle, easily sniping Marius using it. His niece Annie too, having learned from him, guns down two drug dealers. Both are Cree.
  • Transamerica has Toby talk about how his father's an Indian and a millionaire, only to learn that his father's really a Jew for Jesus who's transgender.
  • Utu is a movie about a Māori uprising in 1800s New Zealand, and pretty much the entire Māori cast qualifies as this trope. Very much Truth in Television; see the Real Life examples below.
  • Mangas Coloradas from the 1957 movie War Drums.
  • White Wolves III: Cry of the White Wolf: The Native American pilot takes the lead in helping his passengers get through the mountains after the plane crash for as long as he remains alive. Crosses over with Magical Native American when he appears to Pamela in a vision after his death.
  • Young Guns: The character Chavez was the ranger for Billy the Kid's gang. He was skilled at stealth, animals, knives and medicine. Chavez, played by Lou Diamond Phillips, had a Navajo mother.

    Literature 
  • Sherman Alexie likes to play with this trope:
    • The title character in "The Toughest Indian In The World" plays it straight, but is gay.
    • Victor Joseph deconstructs it: he has a "stoic" face which involves looking like you just killed a buffalo (because the Cour D'Alene are fishermen, but you don't want to look like you just killed a salmon), and he's best friends with Thomas Builds-the-Fire, a gothic-looking storyteller who can't shut up.
    • Arnold in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a Memetic Badass for a day. This despite being a nerd and excessive Ho Yay.
    • In Flight, Zits enters the body of a Sioux boy, and he tries to prevent Little Big Horn, but... On the badass side of things, his father is compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger, he meets Crazy Horse, and he's in the most badass tribe in North America. He later meets his father, who is not a badass at all.
  • Oberon in Adam R. Brown's Alterien is a Lakota Indian with superhuman strength, superhuman speed, a healing factor and can engage just about anyone in hand-to-hand combat or close-quarters armed combat (knives).
  • Bazil Broketail:
    • Not when we first meet her, Lumbee's definitely not. Once she receives some training from Relkin, though, and aids him in liberating a few slaver camps...
    • Norwul is the top hunter in his tribe and after some guidance from Relkin, he also becomes their best warrior. He is so strong that he can pick up an adult man and break his spine on his knee Bane-on-Batman style with little effort.
  • In the Codex Alera series, pretty much every single race is one of these, from the Marats , to the wolflike Canim and to the Ice Men who have kept the powerful fury-crafting (i.e. magic using) Aleran Legion at bay for hundreds of years.
  • The Cowboy and the Cossack: The skill Sioux cowhand Chakko displays shooting arrows from different angles on a moving horse hints at a man who could be a lot tougher and scarier than he lets himself be during the story.
  • In The Dresden Files, Joseph Listens-to-Wind. He's the Nice Guy on the Senior Council, sure — but he can also turn into a bear and go toe-to-toe with demigod-level Eldritch Abominations. Also, the fact that he is on the Senior Council means he is one of the seven most powerful and skilled wizards in the world. The page quote comes from Turn Coat (2009), where he fights a Skinwalker, a kind of Native American evil spirit that can change form and enjoys tormenting its victims. The skinwalker in question, Shagnasty, curbstomps vampires, cuts a bloody path through a whole fae court, and gives the experienced wizard protagonist a nosebleed just being near him. Another character mentions having to lure a different skinwalker into a nuclear testing facility to destroy it. Injun Joe kicked Shagnasty's ass so hard that the abomination ran in fear from him. Even more impressively, Shagnasty is from Najavo and Ute folklore while Joe is from a Great Lakes tribe, so Joe lacked the proper training and ritual knowledge to deal with the creature and he still won by using a rain dance to mitigate its magic and then fighting it in different animal forms including a huge eagle and a bear the size of a school bus.
  • Malazan Book of the Fallen:
    • Though the Wickans are from Quon Tali and the book they mainly feature in, Deadhouse Gates, is set on Seven Cities, even the Seven Cities natives are impressed by their battle prowess. Their leader Coltaine is the most badass of them all by being even more cunning and fiercer than his followers.
    • The Khundryl join the final battle in Deadhouse Gates just to see who's the boss tribe on Seven Cities and drive away most of the tribes assaulting the Malazan forces. Even Coltaine is impressed, although the Khundryl come to the conclusion that the Wickans are even more badass than them.
  • Martín Fierro: At Song III of the First Book of this Narrative Poem, Martin Fierro describes the Mapuche and Ranquel Indians (Natives from Argentina) as men that when they spill his guts for a wound they don't even worry, they will stuff them back in a moment.
  • Peter Pan: There is a fictional tribe of Native Americans created by the imaginations of children living in Neverland, and Tiger Lily is said to be a fearsome warrior who regularly fights off marriage proposals with a tomahawk.
  • Six-Gun Snow White: Snow White is biracial, born to a white man and Crow woman, and becomes a fierce Action Girl when she's grown, good with her gun Rose Red and also using her bare hands to fight.
  • In the Time Scout series, this is the general consensus on downtimers. Don't mess with them; they'll probably kill you. More specifically, the downtimers on-station, Skeeter's Mongolian family, and Jack the Ripper.
  • The protagonist of Trail of Lightning is a full-blood Diné woman who has combat superpowers inherited from her parents' clans.
  • Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch: Half-Apache Pony Flores is one of the few characters on a similar skill level to the main protagonists as far as combat goes.
  • In World War Z, New Zealand manages to get away from the worst of the Zombie Apocalypse due to its remote location. When the apocalypse did show up on their shores, a few hundred Māori managed to clear Auckland of zombies with nothing but traditional clubs and axes.

    Live-Action TV 
  • On The 100, the Grounders are shown to be, on average, much more badass then the people who come down from the Ark. Justified by the Ark being a small, completely isolated society, giving them little opportunity to practice war, and by their heavy reliance on technology, which leaves them in a difficult spot when they start running low on guns or bullets.
  • Something like a solid third of the cast of Banshee fits this trope. Chayton Littlestone and Nola Longshadow are at the top of the heap, though.
  • Criminal Minds has John Black Wolf. He's the de facto leader/police chief of his reservation, and when a group of armed men come with the intention of murdering their children to start a race war, he beats the crap out of them with his bare hands and a knife for self-defense. And he doesn't kill a single one outright (he appears to be a Technical Pacifist who advises Hotch use his baton and not shoot any if he can).
  • Dark Winds: Most of the cast are Navajo, while the tribal police are the series' main characters. Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito, are all tough, competent Navajo cops. On the antagonist side we get people such as Frank Nakai in Season 1, a Navajo and decorated Vietnam veteran who has become a skilled criminal.
  • Deadliest Warrior has had the Apache and Comanche featured in episodes, demonstrating just how lethal and badass they were in real life.
  • Echo (2024): Maya and her relatives shown in the series (past or present) are all skilled (or at least temporarily able) at fighting or athletics. One flashback too shows the Choctaw lighthorsemen (tribal police) hunting down white outlaws on their land in the late 1800s (a female ancestor of Maya's joined her father, a lighthorseman, rescuing him along with his men from an ambush).
  • Legion (2017): Kerry is Native American, always ready to fight, and casually mops the floor with Division mooks in episode 4 (at least until their reinforcements arrive).
  • Letterkenny has Tanis, a Mama Bear, tomboy Action Girl who is the de facto leader of the local Native rez. It's wise to stay on her good side if you don't want half your town burned down.
  • Motherland: Fort Salem: In the shows' universe, the Ojibwe rule over the Cession and strictly enforce their sovereignty through the use of the Cession Marshals, magic-wielding tribesmen who can trace suspected criminals for miles. Even Nicte quickly finds herself outmatched when trying to go up against one of them.
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers had Tommy Oliver. Played with because he was raised white and it didn't come into play until late season three of MMPR (and was revisited during Zeo).
  • Once Upon a Time introduces Tiger Lily in Season 6 as an Action Girl who saves Hook from the Lost Boys. Flashbacks reveal she also used to be a powerful fairy.
  • In Queen of the South, one of Teresa's allies is Taza, the leader of a small reservation in Arizona. While he is initially shown under the thumb of the local cartels, once Teresa convinces him to push back, he quickly proves to be a competent leader, to the point that Teresa makes him a partner in her burgeoning empire.
  • Sherlock & Daughter: Amelia kills an Irish Red Thread thug by the name of O'Leary after he tried to rape her offscreen. She is understandably a bit shaken afterward.
  • Commander Chakotay of Star Trek: Voyager fills the masculine action hero role (not in personality, but in the sense of throwing punches and getting babes, a la Captain Kirk and Commander Riker). To boot, his backstory involves leading a band of outlaws to defend his tribe's home planet against Cardassians, with a passion for boxing on the side. The commander is a soft-spoken man of peace who is most assuredly not to be fucked with.
  • Strange Empire: Kat and Caleb are both Métis. She's The Gunslinger, he's a U.S. Marshal, and neither are people to mess with.
  • In Turn, Robert Rogers' crew includes an extremely competent Abenaki tracker.
  • Deputy Hawk on Twin Peaks. He's shown to be a very good shot, a master knife-thrower, and, of course, a phenomenal tracker. We never find out precisely what nation or tribe he's supposed to be a part of, but his actor, Michael Horse, is descended from multiple tribes, including the Zuni and Mescalero.
  • Walker: Independence: Apache Calian and Comanche Topsannah are both very skilled warriors.

    Music 
  • Johnny Cash's "The Ballad of Ira Hayes"
  • Iron Maiden's song "Run to the Hills" has this, though it also outright says that the US Army won because of superior numbers.
    We fought him hard, we fought him well. Out on the plains, we gave him hell!
    But many came, too much for Cree. Oh will we ever be set free?
  • Robbie Robertson (Anishinabe) has many badass songs.
    We are making a noise in this world!... Making a noise in this world!
    You can bet your ass, we won't go quietly,
    Making a noise in this world.
  • Sabaton: "A Ghost in the Trenches" is about the most effective sniper of World War I, Francis Pegahmagabow, who was a member of the indigenous Ojibwe First Nation and fought in the Canadian military.
  • John Trudell (Santee-Dakota) was a singer-songwriter — also a U.S. Navy veteran, broadcaster, artist, actor, teacher, writer and American Indian movement member involved in the taking of Alcatraz in 1969. He brought this trope to life.

    Oral Tradition 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • The Idaho territory had Chief Thunderbird, prior to the rise of the National Wrestling Alliance. He had previously earned fame in Hawaii when he defeated and unmasked the dreaded Red Scorpion, but that was in 1937, well before Hawaii really entered the consciousness of the continental US. After the NWA there was also Chief Suni War Cloud, who unfortunately wasn't as successful, only holding the NWA Idaho Heavyweight title one time for seven days, but he did win the belt nonetheless.
  • Suni\Sunny War Cloud would go on to become a legacy gimmick for Amerindian men in the NWA. Two successors, one in Canada, the other in Mexico (and Hawaii), would go on to become more successful than the original when it came to winning title belts.
  • Apache Bull Ramos, one of the first of this role to be a heel, at his own insistence, as wrestling promoters not only thought his lack of charisma made babyface a better fit but pushing someone from a group whose slaughter was basically publicly approved as a heel was correctly believed to be dangerous. Bull's sense of timing in regards to working the crowd made it work.
  • Chief Little Eagle and Chief Big Heart enjoyed many reigns as Tag Team Champions of the Georgia territory during the NWA's heyday, although ironically they only held the belts together once, usually teaming with different non-native partners. Bobby Bold Eagle also came down from Canada to become heavyweight champion of Georgia. Subverted with Bobby's cousin Al, who tried a "Dancing Wolf" gimmick and even tried to get some of Bobby's popularity to rub off on him with the ring name "Al Bold Eagle", but did not find success until he rejected his native heritage with an Arab Oil Sheikh gimmick Al Farat. Al then briefly got Ky-Ote Joe to do the same, but Joe found more success embracing his native heritage.
  • Chief Wahoo McDaniel, a football player who began wrestling in the off seasons around the same time Ernie Ladd did but despite the name, Wahoo didn't come from the "red man" sports mascot. It had been in the chief's family long before he started playing sports.
  • The Brisco Brothers, Jack and Gerald. (This was not reflected in their wrestling gimmicks beyond a feud with the cowboy Funks, but the two are Cherokee descendants from Blackwell)
    • Gerald's son Wes also counts.
  • Gran Apache, who after spending ten years on the Mexican independent circuit, started to enter into this trope in the 1980s with the fame he found in Lucha Libre Internacional. He was popular enough to form a pareja with a Gran Apache #2 and win the Pavillón Azteca Tag Team Titles. After LLI and UWA's closing, Gran Apache #1 developed a reputation for winning hair vs hair matches in CMLL and AAA. His wife, Lady Apache, and daughters Fabi and Mari, won numerous title belts and became recognized among the best in the world.
  • Tatanka, a Lumbee. The infamous lack of respect his tribe gets from the US government once led to an angle where he became a vengeful warrior against the wrestling officials he thought were showing him the same disrespect. This was supposed to be a heel gimmick but was so badass the fans took his side. His original heel turn in 1994, when he joined "The Million-Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase's The Million Dollar Corporation, was much less successful.
  • Navajo Warrior, who paints his face underneath his racoon skin hat. Outside of Arizona he's best known for tag team title runs with Shooting Wolf and Ghost Walker as "Native Blood".
  • Florida Championship Wrestling had Mickie James defend their ladies title belt on a Seminole reservation, though one heel challenger(Lexie Fyfe) pointed out James was from a completely different tribe (Powhatan from Virginia) and unsuccessfully tried to convince the fans not to cheer for her.
  • The Chickasaw Warrior Ky-ote Joe, a staple of the US Southwest light heavyweight and Tag Team divisions during the 2000s and 2010s, although he did successfully win the heavyweight belts of UWF06 and 3DW in spite of his relatively small size. Among the tag teams and trios he is apart of, Native Pride with Kunna Keyoh and Arrow Club with Desi Derata and Kyle Hawk also qualify.
  • Hania (Hopi for "Spirit Warrior"), a shredded acrobat dubbed "The Howling Huntress", who is Blackfoot-Cherokee. Unfortunately she tends to suffer from The Worf Effect, but sometimes this ultimately results in being indirectly avenged by the more successful "Native Beast" Nyla Rose.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Soloha Salawa, a celebrated Hopi Ace Pilot from Crimson Skies.
  • Magic: The Gathering: The vampire tribes of Zendikar were designed with this trope in mind.
  • Shadowrun: Native Americans (referred to primarily as Amerindians in the setting) were one of the first human groups to relearn magic once it returned. Thanks to a magic ritual they performed, the Great Ghost Dance, they were able to successfully drive the US government out of most of the western US and formed several new nations.
    • Goes somewhat double for the Sioux Wildcats, one of the scarier special operations groups in the setting.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse has two extant tribes consisting mainly of American Indians in the present day. The Uktena are Magical Native American, whereas the Wendigo are pretty much this trope down to the core. They're one of the major warriors tribes in what's already a Proud Warrior Race, were quite active in AIM in the Sixties, and still have a bit of grudge with the Europe-based tribes.
  • This trope is taken advantage of by the Imperium in Warhammer 40,000 - with countless worlds within its galactic borders and varying conditions and technologies on them, there are some which are so harsh that the world's inhabitants will be at Stone Age technology. Having individuals who survive harsh conditions and prosper with little more than their own strength, they are commonly used as recruits for the Adeptus Asartes.
    • The Eldar Exodites, the descendants of those who saw the terrible depravity and hedonism of the Eldar before The Fall, and fled to the uncivilized backwater worlds on the edge of their empire, places where they'd be forced to work hard to survive. Basically, they're Amish dinosaur-riding cowboy Wood Elves IN SPACE. They tend to keep to themselves, but they're more than capable of schooling anyone who is stupid enough to try and conquer their worlds. In one Black Library book, the Imperium launched an assault on one of the Exodite worlds, and while the Exodites lost eventually, the Imperium needed three Space Marine legions to get the job done. Yes, you just read that right: not "chapters", but legions. Pre-Horus Heresy legions.
    • The Raven Guard are sometimes stylised as space native Americans, ones that have Powered Armour and mandatory 30mm gyrojet rifle and also badass stealth tactics. The Rainbow Warriors are also often Fanonically given an Aztec/Inca theme, which is fitting as the Rainbow Warrior is an American folklore figure, a powerful being who defends life.

    Toys 

    Video Games 

    Visual Novels 
  • Baldr Sky: Mohawk is a Native American, and working under Fenrir, the badass moniker comes with the job. Turns out to be a bit more complex. In actuality he is a designer child based on the genetic information of a long extinct tribe brought to life by a nationalist group. His genes were also altered and was raised in order to be the perfect representation of the idealized Native American warrior.

    Webcomics 
  • Canyon from Ennui GO! is a big, hulking man of Tlingit descent who walks around shirtless with facepaint and is tough enough to shrug off being beat up and locked in a flaming car. That said, he's more of a wrestler who simply plays up his ethnicity as a gimmick rather than someone who is tough because of it.

    Web Original 
  • Mahu: In "Crownless Eagle" the Commonwealth Republic manages to create a whole army made of native american warriors from different tribes. These force is one of the first to take part in the last and largest war in the series.

    Western Animation 
  • The titular protagonist of BraveStarr is a space cop with superpowers.
  • John Thunder, the Native American member of the Centurions. He's a full-blooded Chiracahua Apache, a direct descendant of Geronimo, and the team's Stealth Expert.
  • King of the Hill's John Redcorn double-subverts this. At first, he averts it, but when Big Mountain Fudgecake is introduced, he plays it straight until he realizes he can make more money with children's songs.
  • Injun Joe the Superchief from the Looney Tunes short "Wagon Heels".
  • Just about every character in the action series Maya and the Three. The story is set in fantasy pre-colonial Mexico and South America, so everyone counts as Native American. The only exception is the inhabitants of Luna Island that has a higher concentration of people of African descent.
  • Nathan Explosion of Metalocalypse is only half Native American, bit he fits the trope nonetheless.
  • Jefferson Trueblood from Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends, the sheriff of Roswell as well as the leader of the Alliance's S.T.A.R team, more or less a SWAT team with advanced alien weaponry.
  • Apache Chief from Super Friends combines this with Magical Native American and You No Take Candle speech patterns to create a character that was Fair for Its Day...but just barely.
  • Zorro: The Chronicles: The villainous Yuma. Diego and Ines are also half Native American, through their mother's side.

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