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FRITZ BERTELT: [SPEAKING GERMAN]

The bullets came from Old Shatterhand's magic rifle.

[SPEAKING GERMAN]

He wanted to frighten the red man.

[SPEAKING GERMAN]

And now they are afraid of his rifle.

LEIF ENGER: Fritz Bertelt lived in Germany for his first 10 years, and he remembers his uncle reading stories like this one, stories by the German writer, Karl May, who never visited America until late in life, but whose tales of Native Americans on the Great Plains started an enduring national obsession.

FRITZ BERTELT: I remember as a boy when we played Cowboys and Indians, nobody wanted to be the cowboy. We all wanted to be the Indian. The white man was always thought of as being clumsy and noisy and so on. He would probably scare game away, and so on. But the Indian knew the ways of the woods, and he could always survive in the wild. Indians in the German culture are looked upon as being very superior.

LEIF ENGER: Bertelt now teaches the German language at Brainerd Community College, and he says when relatives visit from his homeland, it is Native Americans they want to see. Though Karl May died in 1912, he is revered by thousands of Germans who attend mock powwows, pipe ceremonies, and so-called Indian villages set up in communities across Germany. Mies vision of Native culture might be the stuff of pulp novels, but his books have sold millions of copies on the continent. And Cheryl Tryon, who launched the Minnesota Indian tourism association, is convinced Europeans want the real thing.

CHERYL TRYON: We have 11 reservations here, two different Indian tribes that offer unique places to visit as far as history. There's cultural events that aren't being promoted. I basically wondered why nobody else had developed a way to promote any of this.

LEIF ENGER: Tryon is not a high-profile, high-powered promoter. She's a calm articulate, idea-laden woman who during the day, runs a small arts and crafts store in a peeling stucco building in Downtown Cass Lake. The toursim association Is her off-hours project, but it's attracted a $10,000 state grant seed money to start tourism discussions with the reservations. Tryon's dilemma would seem to be this, how do you turn culture into product without perpetuating the usual clichés?

[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]

LEIF ENGER: At one end of an open field near Hinckley, Minnesota, several hundred native dancers shuffle and sing beneath a huge canvas big top. The powwow is part of grand opening festivities for the new Mille Lacs Chippewa gaming casino here. The dancers in bright cloth, buckskins, and feather headdresses are exactly the sort of attraction a visiting German might like to see. In fact, there are some tourists in the crowd.

There are 35 millimeters flashing under the canvas alongside the dancing vendors have parked their aluminum trailers in the warm sun, offering snowcones and frybread. It's a big, bright bring-the-kids event. But there are those who wonder if this sort of attraction is simply trading on stereotypes. Vernon Bellecourt of the Minneapolis-based American Indian Movement.

VERNON BELLECOURT: They may leave with a superficial understanding. It would also, I believe in courage, a certain amount of romanticism where people want to identify with us as the proud and noble savage standing up on the hill in some Western painting. Certainly, there could be a certain amount of exploitation.

LEIF ENGER: Still, Bellecourt says he supports increased tourism because it would give Native Americans a chance to educate visitors beyond the Karl May perspective. He says traditional activities like powwows and wild ricing, illustrate long held native beliefs about man's relationship to nature and the spiritual realm. Twin Cities Travel Agent Marcia Grant, who has made several trips to Germany to lay groundwork for future tours, thinks it's true that most Europeans are interested in more than simply seeing a good show with lots of paint and feathers.

MARCIA GRANT: They're very, very serious about learning everything they can about the culture, very interested in the spirituality, the link between the people and the land. That's all very much in front of them as they're experiencing these things. It is not something they do to be for entertainment.

LEIF ENGER: Just how important this sort of cultural tourism could be isn't to be guessed at yet. Cheryl Tryon points to New Mexico, which has a tourism industry built around tribal history and events and where revenues are in the billions. But Minnesota reservations haven't the same tradition of catering to visitors, and there's some local skepticism about it, worry, for example, that certain religious customs might be trampled on by disrespectful or ignorant tourists. On the other hand, recent casino development has given some reservations experience with large groups of people, and that experience has bred confidence. Melanie Benjamin is Commissioner of Administration for the Mille Lacs Chippewa band.

MELANIE BENJAMIN: We're currently in the tourism business. We bring a lot of tourism to this area with the casino. The lake is here as well. I think the community has a lot to do with the involvement, and you talk to your community and find out, which is what is proper and what isn't proper, and that's what you follow.

[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]

LEIF ENGER: At the Hinckley powwow, the dusty green field surrounding the dancers is slowly filling with cars. Some folks who've seen enough dancing set off, walking toward the casino, a few hundred yards to the north. The casino revenues, in fact, are the biggest reason Mille Lacs can now afford to consider investing in cultural tourism. But Cheryl Tryon says, questions about cultural sensitivity mean the process will probably be a slow one.

CHERYL TRYON: To me, education is the main focus of the tourism association and, hopefully, would end a lot of stereotypes, misunderstandings of the culture. Yes, we do live in houses like you do. We do work with computers. We do this kind of stuff. But we also still uphold our traditions, just like a lot of other cultures do.

FRITZ BERTELT: Cheryl Tryon of the Minnesota Indian Tourism Association. This is Leif Enger.