Belgium, and Hergé's milieu was permeated with conservative ideas revolving around "patriotism, Catholicism, strict morality, discipline, and naivety". In 1929, Hergé began The Adventures of Tintin comic strip for , about the exploits of fictional young Belgian reporter Tintin. Having been fascinated with the outdoor world of Scouting and the way of life he called "Red Indians" since boyhood, Hergé wanted to set Tintin's first adventure among the Native Americans in the United States. However, Wallez ordered him to set his first adventure in the Soviet Union as a piece of anti-socialist propaganda for children (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets) and the second had been set in the Belgian Congo to encourage colonial sentiment (Tintin in the Congo). Tintin in America was the third story in the series. At the time, the Belgian far-right was deeply critical of the United States, as it was of the Soviet Union. Wallez—and to a lesser degree Hergé—shared these opinions, viewing the country's capitalism, consumerism, and mechanization as a threat to traditional Belgian society. Wallez wanted Hergé to use the story to denounce American capitalism and had little interest in depicting Native Americans, which was Hergé's primary desire. As a result, Tintin's encounter with the natives took up only a sixth of the narrative. Hergé sought to demystify the "cruel savage" stereotype of the Natives that had been widely perpetuated in western films. His depiction of the Natives was broadly sympathetic, yet he also depicted them as gullible and naïve, much as he had depicted the Congolese in the previous Adventure. Research Hergé attempted greater research into the United States than he had done for the Belgian Congo or Soviet Union. To learn more about Native Americans, Hergé read Paul Coze and René Thévenin's 1928 book ("Customs and History of the Redskin Indians") and visited Brussels' ethnographic museum. As a result, his depiction of the Blackfoot Native Americans was "essentially accurate", with artefacts such as tipis and traditional costume copied from photographs. Although Hergé's depiction of the Native Americans wearing war bonnets could be considered stereotypical, the Blackfeet were one of the few tribes who actually did wear these. To learn about Chicago and its gangsters, he read Georges Duhamel's 1930 book ("Scenes from Future Life"). Written in the context of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Duhamel's work contained strong anti-consumerist and anti-modernist sentiment, criticising the U.S.'s increased mechanisation and standardisation