Plot
Over footage from The Man from Colorado , opening titles inform the audience that during the Civil War the Confederate States of America sent agitators to the American West to incite Indian tribes against the Federal Government to draw troops away from battles in the East.
In 1864 a stagecoach containing two passengers is attacked by an armed band who kill the driver and stop the stage. One of the passengers, Zachary Paige offers the armed but polite band his money but is surprised when they inform him that they are not interested in his money but know his identity as a diplomatic emissary of President Abraham Lincoln sent to the Dakota Territory to negotiate a treaty with the Sioux than includes payment of $130,000 in gold to the tribe. The band take his credentials and Paige is further surprised when his travelling companion, Brock Marsh tells him he is a secret agent of the Confederacy who will impersonate Paige in his diplomacy but will use the opportunity to break the promises and lure the Sioux into attacking the white settlements. The leader of the band, John Lawrence, informs Paige he will be held until after Marsh completes his mission then released. As Lawrence goes away Marsh further explains his mission in a courteous manner, then shoots and kills Paige to protect the mission to the surprise of Lawrence and his band.
Arriving in the nearest city, Marsh as Paige informs the town authorities of his mission and tells them his stage was attacked by an armed Indian band. Marsh meets "Gimpy" Joe Woods who offers to take him to the Sioux, but Marsh chooses Daugherty to take him. Before their departure a posse bring in John Lawrence who they have identified as a Confederate agent and seek to lynch him. The lynch mob becomes an impromptu court run by Judge Baker who try Lawrence for treason on the spot and sentence him to hanging. Gimpy implores Marsh as Paige to use his Federal authority to make the case a Federal matter and delay Lawrence's fate to a trial by Federal authorities. Marsh refuses, and Lawrence is hanged in front of his daughter Ruth, who swears vengeance on the town and its population. Gimpy takes Marsh aside and reveals himself as Lawrence's second in command and asks him why he did not save Lawrence with Marsh replying that his mission is more important to the Confederacy.
Daugherty informs Marsh that though Chief War Cloud is a reasonable man his son Black Buffalo desires the extermination of all whites. Proving his point, the pair are attacked by a war party led by Black Buffalo where his brother is killed by a proficient pistol shot by Marsh. The pair split up where Daugherty escapes but Marsh is captured. When Marsh realises Black Buffalo is not interested in the peace treaty and will burn him alive the clever Marsh shames the Indians that they are cowards and will be punished in the afterlife for not giving a prisoner a fair and sporting chance for his life. Marsh is pitted against a brave, both armed with knives in a fight to the death that Marsh wins by throwing his knife into the brave's back gaining him time for a rescue by Daugherty's posse.
Upon return to the town where Marsh intends to buy drinks for the posse he is called into the office of Judge Baker and Marshal Collins who show him the body of the real Paige who was buried in a shallow grave dug up by coyotes. As he is dressed as an Easterner and not dressed for riding the only possible way he could have come to the area would be as a passenger on the stage that Marsh came in on. Marsh denies he had a travelling companion; as the Marshal and Judge examine the body they find a label in the dead man's jacket with the name of Zachary Paige. As Marsh draws his pistol the pair are shot in the back from an open window by Gimpy armed with a rifle. When the townspeople burst in and see Marsh's weapon unfired they believe Ruth Lawrence is responsible.
Gimpy and his band discover the hard way that in addition to starting an Indian uprising, Marsh wants the $130,000 in gold for himself alone.
The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke, also spelled Absaroka, are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation, the Crow Indian Reservation, located in the south-central part of the state.
The Lakota are a Native American people. Also known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people, with the Eastern Dakota (Santee) and Western Dakota (Wičhíyena). Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.
The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations peoples from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples. Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux", an exonym from a French transcription ("Nadouessioux") of the Ojibwe term "Nadowessi", can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.
Jay Silverheels was an Indigenous Canadian actor and athlete. He was well known for his role as Tonto, the Native American companion of the Lone Ranger in the American Western television series The Lone Ranger.
The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, was the deadliest mass shooting in American history, involving nearly three hundred Lakota people shot and killed by soldiers of the United States Army. The massacre, part of what the U.S. military called the Pine Ridge Campaign, occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, following a botched attempt to disarm the Lakota camp. The previous day, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside approached Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them five miles westward to Wounded Knee Creek, where they made camp. The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth, arrived and surrounded the encampment. The regiment was supported by a battery of four Hotchkiss mountain guns. The Army was catering to the anxiety of settlers who called the conflict the Messiah War and were worried the Ghost Dance signified a potentially dangerous Sioux resurgence. Historian Jeffrey Ostler wrote in 2004, "Wounded Knee was not made up of a series of discrete unconnected events. Instead, from the disarming to the burial of the dead, it consisted of a series of acts held together by an underlying logic of racist domination."
Red Cloud was a leader of the Oglala Lakota from 1865 to 1909. He was one of the most capable Native American opponents whom the United States Army faced in the western territories. He defeated the United States during Red Cloud's War, which was a fight over control of the Powder River Country in northeastern Wyoming and southern Montana. The largest action of the war was the 1866 Fetterman Fight, with 81 US soldiers killed; it was the worst military defeat suffered by the US Army on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn 10 years later.
Gordon Wendell Kahl was an American farmer who is known for being a one-time member of the Posse Comitatus movement and for his involvement in two fatal shootouts with law enforcement officers in the United States in 1983.
The Battle of Big Mound was a United States Army victory in July 1863 over the Santee Sioux Indians allied with some Yankton, Yanktonai and Teton Sioux in Dakota Territory.
Little Crow III was a Mdewakanton Dakota chief who led a faction of the Dakota in a five-week war against the United States in 1862.
The Lower Sioux Agency, or Redwood Agency, was the federal administrative center for the Lower Sioux Indian Reservation in what became Redwood County, Minnesota, United States. It was the site of the Battle of Lower Sioux Agency on August 18, 1862, the first organized battle of the Dakota War of 1862.
The Rosebud Indian Reservation is an Indian reservation in South Dakota, United States. It is the home of the federally recognized Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who are Sicangu, a band of Lakota people. The Lakota name Sicangu Oyate translates as the "Burnt Thigh Nation", also known by the French term, the Brulé Sioux.
Spotted Tail was a Sichangu Lakota tribal chief. Famed as a great warrior since his youth, warring on Ute, Pawnee and Absaroke (“Crow”), and having taken a leading part in the Grattan Massacre, he led his warriors in the Colorado and Platte River uprising after the massacre performed by John M. Chivington's Colorado Volunteers of the peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camping on Sand Creek, but declined to participate in Red Cloud's War.
The Goingsnake Massacre refers to the eleven victims of a fatal shootout on April 15, 1872, that broke out during a murder and assault trial in the Cherokee court in the Goingsnake District of the Cherokee Nation The dead included three Cherokee on the defendant's side, including his attorney and a brother; a US Deputy Marshal and four members of his federal posse, plus three relatives of the Cherokee murder victim. Another ten men were wounded, including both Cherokee and white men.
The Spirit Lake Tribe is a federally recognized tribe based on the Spirit Lake Dakota Reservation located in east-central North Dakota on the southern shores of Devils Lake. It is made up of people of the Pabaksa (Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna), Sisseton (Sisíthuŋwaŋ) and Wahpeton (Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ) bands of the Dakota tribe. Established in 1867 in a treaty between Sisseton-Wahpeton Bands and the United States government, the reservation, at 47°54′38″N98°53′01″W, consists of 1,283.777 square kilometres (495.669 sq mi) of land area, primarily in Benson and Eddy counties. Smaller areas extend into Ramsey, Wells and Nelson counties.
The Dakota are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into the Eastern Dakota and the Western Dakota.
The Oglala are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people who, along with the Dakota, make up the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the United States.
The Great Sioux War of 1876, also known as the Black Hills War, was a series of battles and negotiations that occurred in 1876 and 1877 in an alliance of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne against the United States. The cause of the war was the desire of the US government to obtain ownership of the Black Hills. Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, settlers began to encroach onto Native American lands, and the Sioux and the Cheyenne refused to cede ownership. Traditionally, American military and historians place the Lakota at the center of the story, especially because of their numbers, but some Native Americans believe the Cheyenne were the primary target of the American campaign.
Wabasha II, also known as Wapahasha, Wapasha, or "The Leaf," succeeded his father as head chief of the Mdewakanton Dakota tribe in the early 1800s. He led the Dakota forces fighting with the British in the War of 1812, but sided with the United States in the Black Hawk War of 1832. Chief Wabasha II signed the Treaties of Prairie du Chien in 1825 and 1830.
The Battle of Grand Coteau (North Dakota) or the Battle of Grand Coteau du Missouri was a battle fought between Métis buffalo hunters of Red River and the Sioux in North Dakota between July 13 and 14, 1851. The Métis were victorious. It was the last major battle between the two groups.
