COMIC RELIEF : These Native Americans Can Laugh at Themselves in ‘Wagons East’

Picture this: A troupe of Indians--played by some known as much for their activism as their acting--fending off fellow warriors to help a bunch of white settlers.

Sound absurd? Well, that’s exactly what drew some of Hollywood’s more prominent Native American actors to star in Carolco Pictures’ off-the-wall late-summer Western comedy, “Wagons East,” currently filming in Durango, Mexico. Director Peter Markle’s film also stars John Candy and Richard Lewis.

The plot: An East Coast surgeon (Lewis) and his family move west in the late 1800s. Without cappuccino and opera, the rugged life spent among sweaty, stinking animals on the dusty plains proves intolerable. So, the neurotic failed frontiersman packs up his crew and enlists a hapless wagonmaster (Candy), to guide them back east. But the wagonmaster takes a wrong turn and drives them right into the gullet of Indian territory . . . rough Indian territory.

Enter Russell Means, Rodney A. Grant, Stuart Proud Eagle Grant and Michael Horse, who capture the ragged band of travelers, but forfeit their scalping plans, smelling a gold mine of their own: They’ll help the settlers return, if and only if they promise to ward off any other ambitious whites hoping to strike it rich in the west. Problem is railroad baron J. P. Moreland, who is expecting a major land rush, is worried the naysaying eastbound group will jeopardize the government money he’s getting to subsidize his westbound railroad. So he hires the cavalry to thwart the deserters’ plans.

Now Means, who plays the chief in the film, is the Native American activist who founded the American Indian Movement, and also played the title character, Chingachgook, in “The Last of the Mohicans.” Rodney Grant, who plays Big Snake That Makes Women Faint, was the Sioux warrior Wind in His Hair in “Dances With Wolves” and Crazy Horse in the ABC miniseries “Son of the Morning Star.” Stuart Proud Eagle Grant, who portrays White Cloud, had a co-starring role in “Geronimo.” And Michael Horse, an actor, musician and renowned silversmith who played Deputy Hawk on David Lynch’s offbeat TV series “Twin Peaks,” appeared in “Passenger 57.”

Considering their resumes, why would this group consider such thin roles in a lightweight comedy? In fact, the humor was the real draw.

“The main problem with films is that everybody always thinks of us as a violent people,” says Horse. “We are not. We are spiritual. And when you show someone without a sense of humor or families, which is the way you usually see Indians in movies, then they are without a spiritual base and become subhuman. And when they’re subhuman, that justifies showing them anyway you want.”

Yet, he concedes, “I’m the meaner Indian in this film. I love what I did in this. I cracked myself up.”

Horse plays a Lakota Indian trying to attack the eastbound wagon train. When he sees Big Snake and White Cloud riding with the white travelers, he asks, “What gives? After all, my character went to warrior school with Big Snake.”

Horse, who grew up in Tucson, is part Zuni, Yaqui and Cree. “We’re doing this film because we smell a classic with a hysterical premise.”

Stuart Proud Eagle Grant, a Lakota, says when he auditioned for his role, “I could tell (director) Peter (Markle) and (producer) Gary (Goodman) didn’t really know if the script offended me. I was laughing inside and I let them squirm for a minute or two. Then I looked up at them and said: ‘This is a scream.’ ” Finally, someone was offering a project that showed Native Americans the way they see themselves--a people with a strong sense of humor.”

He says his character is “a little white in the moccasins. He comes off as a really tough warrior, but he wears his feather on the wrong side. I won’t say any more except that gay people in the Indian culture are revered as high as the medicine man spiritually.”

Like Proud Eagle, Rodney Grant saddled up to “Wagons East” for another reason. It was a chance to star in a movie made at the site of all those John Wayne Westerns: Durango.

“This town was founded on John Wayne swaggering in and shooting five Indians with one shot . . . so ridiculous,” Grant says. “That’s why they always shot those movies in Mexico. If John Wayne had met some real Indians they would have whipped his butt.”