Experienced scout Kirby Randolph (John Payne) is betrayed by a Kiowa chief (George Keymas), leading to a massacre of the wagon train under his watch. Ostracised from his community, Randolph gets one last chance at redemption when he is hired to guide a shipment of weapons for Jess Griswold (Rod Cameron), although his mission brings him into contact with the Kiowa again.

It seems that in Santa Fe Passage you simply cannot trust a Native American, at least that is now Lillie Hayward’s screenplay tells it. Adapted from a storyline by Heck Allen and a short story by Clay Fisher, this 1955 western sits on a less progressed end of American race relations. It is not simply the treacherous Kiowa – a Great Plains tribe now located in Oklahoma – but the characters’ attitudes in general. Randolph quickly falls for Griswold’s girl, the beautiful Aurelie St Clair, but his feelings shift rapidly when he learns she is half-Native American herself. The repeated use of some terms, now accepted by the American mainstream as offensive slurs, also help to make this a somewhat difficult viewing experience. Some of these attitudes are abandoned to make way for the story’s resolution, but they do not disappear with justification or purpose; they are simply in the way of a happy ending and need to go.

To its mild credit, the film does not resolve the question of St Clair’s race by revealing she is not Native American at all; that technique was commonplace in mid-century cinema, and seems particularly odious. Instead Randolph seems to simply stop caring all that much.

It is a Republic Pictures production, which means a tight production budget and a crunched-up shooting schedule. Director William Witney made four features films in 1955 at this pace, which has unavoidable consequences for how the finished film looks and plays out.

Faith Domergue has presence as St Clair, and both John Payne and Rod Cameron make for solid, gruff leads. Film enthusiasts may enjoy seeing Slim Pickens among the cast. The Native Americans – at least the speaking roles – are all played by white actors. It is tokenistic, somewhat risible stuff. Part of the narrative involves shipping the weapons to Mexico; thankfully no negative stereotypes of the Mexicans turn up.

Santa Fe Passage feels like a baseline western for 1955: competently made but relatively mediocre, still invested in fairly toxic cultural attitudes, but watchable enough for a semi-interested audience. You wouldn’t watch it twice; then again, it wasn’t made to be.

1955 West is a review project to watch as many western features from 1955 as possible, in order to gain a ‘snapshot’ view of the genre at its height. According to Letterboxd, there were 72 westerns released that year; this is the 29th film reviewed. You can see all of FictionMachine’s reviews to date by clicking here.