After the Civil War Pvt. O'Meara (Rod Steiger), who fought for the Confederacy, heads out West. He falls in with a Sioux scout for the army and is captured by the Sioux. In a "Run of the Arrow" test, he survives and then becomes a member of the tribe. He renounces the US government and tells Blue Buffalo (Charles Bronson), that he is one of them.
The movie explores the bitterness that Southerners had at the end of the war. In a conversation betwen O'Meara and Captain Clark about the Civil War we see the bitterness:
Captain Clark : It's why we were fighting. That's whats important.
O'Meara : Think we were wrong?
Clark : Well, blood and home and kin are worth fighting for, sure. But no man can put that above his country.
O'Meara : You don't understand sir. Wait a munute. We had a right to fight for our rights.
Clark : Well Lincoln had to keep the Union together.
No union be damned. Union be damned now. There's something you Northerners don't understand. We don't like it. We don't you makin up laws. We don't like it, do you here. We never liked it. Tellin us what to do, how to think, what to think, who to live with. No sir, we don't like it and we'll fight it and we'll go down fighting but at least we'll go down like a free white Christian country.
Clark : Free, white and Christian, huh. Burning crosses, hiding under pillow cases and terrorizing families. Free, white and Christian?
O'Meara : I don't know anything about that sir.
Clark : Oh yeah, it's always the other fella.
O'Meara : Captain, I'd like you to understand something. No matter what you believe, no matter how you believe in it, no matter how good you think it is for somebody else; you'll never make the South accept it by jamming it down their throat.
The movie also shows how the US was going to move in to Indian lands with or without the Indians permission. It also has some really good scenes of the Indians' village.
The movie would have been better if it used Indian actors and language. Charles Bronson was not believable at all as Blue Buffalo, he spoke better English than I do. Yellow Moccasin, played by Sara Montiel, had her voice dubbed by Angie Dickinson. The Indians were, however, portrayed in a sympathetic manner.
In the the end, O'Meara tries to get the troops, who are led by a Custer like cavalry officer seeking glory, to leave the Sioux lands. When he refuses, the Sioux attack and massacre the troops. When the cavalry officer is being tortured O'Meara steps in and shoots him putting him out of his misery. By doing so he shows he is still an American and not a Sioux. At the end he leaves with his Indian wife and adapted son.
Sam Fuller opens up a lot of question : about racism, about who was right in the Civil War, about how should the Indians have been treated and what their options were. An interesting movie, well worth seeing.
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