Actor / Director Profile

Thurman Lee Haas was born on 3 February, 1920 in central Oklahoma on the Pottawatomie Indian Reservation (home of the Kickapoo Tribe). His parents were Reuben Claude Haas and the former Ann Maud Waldrip. His father was a farmer who later became involved in tribal governments in Oklahoma and the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Thurman's family were members of the Oneida Indian Nation who, over a century earlier, had been forced to relocate from New York State to what was then known as the Northwest Territory in the area that later became the State of Wisconsin.As a youth Thurman spent a good deal of his time on hunting trips in rural Oklahoma with his pony, Pet and his dog, White Man. The dog once saved his life by dragging him ashore after he had fallen into the Red River. Thurman served in the US Army until the early 1950s and began appearing in small movie rolls not long after his discharge. His acting career got a boost when Walt Disney cast him to play Chief Red Stick in Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955). Over his career Thurman would play Native Americans in approximately eight out of every ten projects he appeared in.In his off time Thurman wrote and contributed stories to popular men's magazines of the day. One such story earned him a letter of kudos from writer John Steinbeck. The cause of his untimely death in Los Angeles on 21 November, 1966 appears not to be publicly known. He was survived by his wife, Nancy Scott and three children. Much of the information above came from public records and a newspaper article promoting the Disney movie, Savage Sam (1963).