Native Americans in popular culture media is the Lone Ranger's sidekick, Tonto, most famously portrayed by Native American actor Jay Silverheels. James Fenimore Cooper featured a character called "The Sagamore" in his novel "The Last of the Mohicans". Rick, the protagonist of Simon Spurrier's novel, "The Culled" (2006, book 1 of The Afterblight Chronicles), belongs to the Haudenosaunee people and is guided through crises by the sachem. Another character, named Hiawatha, saves Rick's life and advises him the Tadodaho have said Rick and Hiawatha are aligned. Throughout Sherman Alexie's poem, "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel" he states that all of the Indians
Jay Silverheels a Mohawk. His father was wounded and decorated for service at the Battle of the Somme and Ypres during World War I, and later was an adjutant training Polish-American recruits for the Blue Army (Poland) for service in France, at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Silverheels excelled in athletics, most notably in lacrosse, before leaving home to travel around North America. In the 1930s, he played indoor lacrosse as "Harry Smith" with the "Iroquois" of Rochester, New York in the North American Amateur Lacrosse Association. He lived for a time in Buffalo, New York, and in 1938 placed second in the Middleweight class