The title says it all. I just watched an old western and the protagonist (his name is Winnetou for all who know the books/films) who is a native American (of the apache tribe) always talks about himself and about people he talks with, for which we normally would use the 2. person, in the third person. I just wondered if they talked like this and if it is something that has to do with the way the apache or other native american languages work or if this is only fiction
There are hundreds of distinct cultural and linguistic groups in the Americas, so it's hard to make sweeping generalizations about "Native Americans". However, I am not aware of any Indigenous language in the Americas that *doesn't have* a first-person singular pronoun. Regional patterns in pronouns have actually been used to study early human migration within the Americas.
I have no idea how the trope of Native people talking in third person originated.
The best I can point you to is this history of non-Native scholarship on Indigenous American languages.