I used to live in Colorado, and, you know, up in the mountains there’s all these signs that say “Watch for falling rocks.” And, um, so the story goes that these two Native American kids were, like, becoming men, or something. And so they go up into the mountains and one of them gets lost. And so the one kid comes back, and they would go, “Oh, where is this one kid?” Um… and that kid’s name was Falling Rocks, so it was sort of like a joke, so it was like, “Watch for Falling Rocks.” Um… yeah, up in the mountains.

Thoughts:

This story contributes to Anglo-Americans’ and American tourists’ fascination with popularizing Native American culture and history. The inclusion of “Native American” tropes (often seen in early Hollywood depictions of Native Americans) such as a journey or ritual to “become men,” odd-sounding (to Anglo-Americans) nature-oriented names like “Falling Rocks,” and the tragic disappearance of a young man on an adventure reveals the continuing tendency of Anglo-Americans to put Native Americans and Native American culture into these same stereotypical roles, for the sake of a pun or humor.