April 12 was the birthday of the film actor known as Chief Thundercloud (1899-1955). As it happens, there is a “thundercloud” surrounding the actor’s true identity. His real name has been given as Victor Daniels, but also as Vazquez. Studio hoopla gave out that he was either a Cherokee or a Muskogee from Oklahoma, but the evidence is stronger that he was from Arizona and thus probably Pima or Apache, or, as some have claimed, Mexican (though if he was the latter he seems pretty plainly of mestizo heritage). It is known that he is not the same man as the Chief Thunder Cloud (1856-1916) who had worked for P.T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill Cody. To confuse matters, he DID appear in the films Young Buffalo Bill (1940), Buffalo Bill (1944), Buffalo Bill in Tomahawk Territory (1952) and the tv show Buffalo Bill Jr. (1955).
Thundercloud’s story is that in his youth he’d worked as a ranch hand and rodeo performer, and made his way to Hollywood, where his first employment was as a stunt man. He began appearing in roles on camera in 1935, acting in over 80 parts over the next 20 years. His most notable credit is as the original Tonto in the serial The Lone Ranger (1938) and its sequel The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939), beating Jay Silverheels to the part by several years. He is also noted for playing Geronimo in the 1939 eponymous film, as well as the later I Killed Geronimo (1950) and the aforementioned episode of Buffalo Bill Jr. While his meat and potatoes were B movies and serials, he did work in some well-known main features, many which came to be regarded as classics. These include The Plainsman (1936), Union Pacific (1939), Wyoming (1940), Northwest Mounted Police (1940), Western Union (1941), and numerous Randolph Scott pictures.
While Chief Thundercloud always played Native American characters, occasionally he was in comedies and musicals such as Silly Billies (1936) with Wheeler and Woolsey, The Cat and the Canary (1939) with Bob Hope, Shut My Big Mouth (1942) with Joe E. Brown, the Paul Dresser bio-pic My Gal Sal (1942) with Susan Hayward and Victor Mature, and The Traveling Saleswoman (1950) with Joan Davis. His very last film was John Ford’s The Searchers (1956).
Chief Thundercloud died from complications from stomach cancer surgery at the age of 56.