Jay Silverheels was a
Kanien'kehá:ka actor born
Harold J. Smith on May 26th, 1912. He was born on the
Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation reservation, the most populous
First Nation in
Canada, and the only nation in which all six Iroquois nations live together. He was the third of eleven children born to
Major George Smith, the most decorated Native American soldier in the Canadian Army, who served in
World War I.
Harold began going by the name Jay and was given the nickname Silverheels when he played on the lacrosse team, the
Mohawk Stars, at sixteen. He later moved across the
Niagara River to play lacrosse on the
North American Amateur Lacrosse Association team, the
Rochest
er Iroquois. He also boxed and in 1938 placed second in the middleweight section of the
Golden Gloves tournament. He lived for a time in
Buffalo, where he had his first son,
Ron, with
Edna Lickers.
The previous year he'd begun working in film, as an extra in the musical comedy,
Make a Wish. He married his first wife,
Bobbi, and they had a daughter named
Sharon. They divorced in 1943. Over the next few years he appeared, usually uncredited, as a stuntman or extra in
The Sea Hawk, Too Many Girls, Hudson's Bay, Wester Union,
Jungle Girl,
This Woman is Mine,
Valley of the Sun,
Perils of Nyoka,
Good Morning, Judge,
Daredevils of the West,
The Girl from Monterrey,
Northern Pursuit,
The Phantom, I Am an American, Raiders at the Border, Passage to Marseille, The Tiger Woman, Haunted Harbor, Lost in a Harem and
Song of the Sarong.
In the latter half of the 1940s, he began acting in more prestigious films, including
Captain from Castile (1948) and
Lust for Gold (1949). In 1949, he was cast in the role that would bring him both his greatest fame, and stifle him with typecasting, as
Tonto, the faithful friend of the
Lone Ranger. Tonto had previously been portrayed, on the
Old Time Radio program by a white
English actor,
John Todd. The TV series became
ABC's highest rated program and gave the network its first hit, six years after its initial broadcast. It also made Silverheels the most famous Native American of the era, and the first Native American TV star.