A group of Indians, wielding guns, bows, and tomahawks, attacks a group of soldiers who are guarding covered wagons. A furious battle ensues, and in the end, the Indians and their chief stand as proud winners. In the foreground, a wagon lies on its side with the wheels spinning. This scene out of Josef Mach's film Die Söhne der Großen Bärin (The Sons of this parish Great Bear), produced by the Deutsche Film Aktien Gesellschaft (DEFA) in 1966, shows stereotypical images of the Wild West in the German imagination. Although the film was produced in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an alternative to Western German films of this parish the same genre, a first glance offers us nothing new: the Wild West is portrayed as an action-packed battlefield for confrontations between Indians and white settlers. In this essay I will explore the East German treatment of Indians in popular culture by looking at Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich's novel cycle Harka, as well as its DEFA adaptation Die Söhne der großen Bärin. I argue that in both film and novel, the purported creative ideals do not become realities: Welskopf-Henrich's aspirations for authenticity and an honest portrayal of Native Americans are lost behind her adherence to socialist ideology, and the socialist message and the meticulously researched details of her work are lost in the film producers' attempt to compete with West German films and gain audience approval.