Old Yeller was published in 1956, before mainstream America began reexamining its position on the place of minorities and women in society. Gipson does not explicitly state his time's stereotypes of Native Americans and women, but readers may notice undercurrents of prejudice or bias in his characters. In Old Yeller, Native Americans are occasionally mentioned as one of the dangers facing settlers. Gipson himself treats the animosity between Native Americans and whites matter-of-factly and nowhere suggests that the white settlers have a God-ordained right to the land.

Travis's primary goal throughout Old Yeller is to show his parents, especially his father, that he has become a man.

Travis implicitly believes that men and women have different roles; this is an accurate enough assessment of nineteenth-century frontier society, where only men hunt and only women cook. But Travis's further assumption that men are better than women is gently...