Rodd Redwing

Roderic Redwing (born Webb Richardson; August 24, 1904 – May 29, 1971) was an American trickshooter, stunt performer, and actor known for his work in Western films. He was known as a top gun, knife, tomahawk, whip, and drill instructor in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Though he presented himself as Chickasaw Native American, he was actually African American without any known Indigenous ancestry, a fact not widely revealed until after his death. Biography Redwing was born Webb Richardson on August 24, 1904, to Black parents in Tennessee. His father, Ulysses William Richardson (b. 1873), was an elevator man. His mother, Lillian Webb (b. 1878), was a manicurist and hairdresser. Lillian divorced her husband William in 1920. Webb moved to New York City to attend New York University and pursue a career in acting; he appeared in the 1929 musical Malinda in Greenwich Village, with a cast of African American performers. Native American persona Webb later changed his name to Roderic "Rodd" Redwing, adopted a fictitious Native-American identity (a phenomenon sometimes now referred to as Pretendian), and reported his birthplace as New York City. Such a deception was not uncommon in early 20th-century America, where Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (born Sylvester Clark Long) had fooled New York high society. Redwing claimed that his mother was from a Chickasaw reservation in Oklahoma, and that his father was a stage actor. Some sources reported that he used the Hindi-sounding name Roderick Rajpurkaii, Jr., and said his father was a Brahmin mind reader from India.