According to the model of film genres articulated in Thomas Schatz's 1981 book Hollywood Genres, this scene from The Searchers is an example of the refinement stage in the "stages of generic evolution" as seen in Hollywood Westerns. John Wayne, the archetypal cowboy good-guy of Ford's earlier Westerns here goes on a racist, black-hatted rampage that includes moments of "savagery" learned from his Native American rivals that fly in the face of white civilization.