They Rode West | |
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Directed by | Phil Karlson |
Screenplay by | DeVallon Scott Frank Nugent |
Based on | Leo Katcher (based upon a story by) |
Produced by | Lewis J. Rachmil |
Starring | Robert Francis Donna Reed May Wynn Philip Carey |
Cinematography | Charles Lawton Jr. |
Edited by | Henry Batista |
Music by | Paul Sawtell |
Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | Columbia Pictures |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 84 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
They Rode West is a 1954 American Western film directed by Phil Karlson. It reunites two of the stars of The Caine Mutiny , Robert Francis and May Wynn. It also stars Donna Reed and Philip Carey. Based on the story Wood Hawk by Leo Katcher, it was filmed at the Corriganville movie ranch, using the same fort set that was built in 1948 for the John Ford film "Fort Apache." [1] [ self-published source? ]
Returning from a patrol, a well-liked officer of the 14th Cavalry is wounded in the leg by a renegade Kiowa's arrow. Brought back to the post, their incompetent surgeon kills him through a lack of knowledge of stopping bleeding. As the three previous post surgeons were an alcoholic, a drug addict and a surgeon whom the soldiers regarded as being a "butcher", a new surgeon is requested who is competent. Surgeon Lieutenant Seward arrives at the post with the wife of Colonel Waters, commanding the regiment, and his flirtatious niece Laurie.
Waters and Captain Peter Blake are concerned with recovering ten stolen repeating rifles and preventing the so-far-peaceful Kiowa from leaving their reservation to join up with the warlike Comanche. Both treat the Kiowa roughly as enemies without concern for their welfare as government wards and human beings. Doctor Seward accompanies Blake to the reservation to recover the rifles and meets a white woman who has become Manyi-ten, and the tribal medicine man, Isatai, gaining compassion for the Kiowa. The woman's son has malaria; Blake tries to prevent Seward from treating him, but Seward does so anyway.
Seward tries to prevent an epidemic and suggests that the Kiowa move off their fetid reservation to the high country. An angry Colonel Waters at first places him under house arrest but then sends him on a combat patrol that is ambushed when the two tribes combine against them. With a number of troopers killed and wounded, the command turns on Seward as a "wood hawk" (traitor). Only Laurie, with a growing compassion for the Kiowa, remains loyal to Seward.
Manyi-ten brings warning of a combined attack on the fort by both the Comanche and Kiowa. The fort is besieged and half of the garrison comes down with malaria. Seward leaves the post to persuade Isatai into making peace but Blake follows in the dark to kill him as a traitor. Instead he shoots Spotted Wolf, the warrior son of Chief Satanta. Seward brings Spotted Wolf back to the fort to operate on him and possibly stop the war. Despite his enmity, the colonel acquiesces in the face of the threat of overwhelming attack. Seward saves Spotted Wolf's life and Satanta calls off the war. Colonel Waters, in turn, vows to do all he can to allow the Kiowa to continue to live peacefully in the high country.
Kiowa or CáuigúIPA:[kɔ́j-gʷú]) people are a Native American tribe and an Indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries, and eventually into the Southern Plains by the early 19th century. In 1867, the Kiowa were moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma.
Quanah Parker was a war leader of the Kwahadi ("Antelope") band of the Comanche Nation. He was likely born into the Nokoni ("Wanderers") band of Tabby-nocca and grew up among the Kwahadis, the son of Kwahadi Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Anglo-American who had been abducted as an eight-year-old child during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836 and assimilated into the Nokoni tribe. Following the apprehension of several Kiowa chiefs in 1871, Quanah Parker emerged as a dominant figure in the Red River War, clashing repeatedly with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. With European-Americans hunting American bison, the Comanches' primary sustenance, into near extinction, Quanah Parker eventually surrendered and peaceably led the Kwahadi to the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
The Medicine Lodge Treaty is the overall name for three treaties signed near Medicine Lodge, Kansas, between the Federal government of the United States and southern Plains Indian tribes in October 1867, intended to bring peace to the area by relocating the Native Americans to reservations in Indian Territory and away from European-American settlement. The treaty was negotiated after investigation by the Indian Peace Commission, which in its final report in 1868 concluded that the wars had been preventable. They determined that the United States government and its representatives, including the United States Congress, had contributed to the warfare on the Great Plains by failing to fulfill their legal obligations and to treat the Native Americans with honesty.
The First Battle of Adobe Walls took place between the United States Army and Native Americans. The Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache tribes drove from the battlefield a United States column that was responding to attacks on white settlers moving into the Southwest. The battle on November 25, 1864, resulted in light casualties on both sides.
Satanta was a Kiowa war chief. He was a member of the Kiowa tribe, born around 1815, during the height of the power of the Plains Tribes, probably along the Canadian River in the traditional winter camp grounds of his people.
Kicking Bird, also known as Tene-angop'te, "The Kicking Bird", "Eagle Who Strikes with his Talons", or "Striking Eagle" was a High Chief of the Kiowa in the 1870s. It is said that he was given his name for the way he fought his enemies. He was a Kiowa, though his grandfather had been a Crow captive who was adopted by the Kiowa. His mysterious death at Fort Sill on May 3, 1875, is the subject of much debate and speculation.
Satank was a prestigious Kiowa warrior and medicine man. He was born about 1800, probably in Kansas, and killed June 8, 1871. An able warrior, he became part of the Koitsenko, the society of the bravest Kiowa warriors. He led many raids against the Cheyennes, the Sacs, and the Foxes. As the white settlers' importance increased, he raided settlements, wagon trains, and even army outposts.
The Warren Wagon Train raid, also known as the Salt Creek massacre, occurred on May 18, 1871. Henry Warren was contracted to haul supplies to forts in the west of Texas, including Fort Richardson, Fort Griffin, and Fort Concho. Traveling down the Jacksboro-Belknap road heading towards Salt Creek Crossing, they encountered William Tecumseh Sherman. Less than an hour after encountering the famous General, they spotted a rather large group of riders ahead. They quickly realized that these were Native American warriors, probably Kiowa and/or Comanche.
The Texas–Indian wars were a series of conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians during the 19th-century. Conflict between the Plains Indians and the Spanish began before other European and Anglo-American settlers were encouraged—first by Spain and then by the newly Independent Mexican government—to colonize Texas in order to provide a protective-settlement buffer in Texas between the Plains Indians and the rest of Mexico. As a consequence, conflict between Anglo-American settlers and Plains Indians occurred during the Texas colonial period as part of Mexico. The conflicts continued after Texas secured its independence from Mexico in 1836 and did not end until 30 years after Texas became a state of the United States, when in 1875 the last free band of Plains Indians, the Comanches led by Quahadi warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
The Little Arkansas Treaty was a set of treaties signed between the United States of America and the Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Southern Cheyenne, and Southern Arapaho at Little Arkansas River, Kansas in October 1865. On October 14 and 18, 1865 the United States and all of the major Plains Indians Tribes signed a treaty on the Little Arkansas River, which became known as the Little Arkansas Treaty. It is notable in that it lasted less than two years, the reservations it created for the Plains Indians were never created at all, and were reduced by 90% eighteen months later in the Medicine Lodge Treaty.
Dohäsan, Dohosan, Tauhawsin, Tohausen, or Touhason was a prominent Native American. He was War Chief of the Kata or Arikara band of the Kiowa Indians, and then Principal Chief of the entire Kiowa Tribe, a position he held for an extraordinary 33 years. He is best remembered as the last undisputed Principal Chief of the Kiowa people before the Reservation Era, and the battlefield leader of the Plains Tribes in the largest battle ever fought between the Plains tribes and the United States.
The trial of Satanta and Big Tree occurred in May 1871 in the town of Jacksboro in Jack County, Texas, United States. This historic trial of Native American war chiefs of the Kiowa Indians Satanta and Big Tree for the murder of seven teamsters during a raid on Salt Creek Prairie near Jacksboro, Texas, marked the first time the United States had tried Native American chiefs in a state court. The trial attracted national and international attention. The two Kiowa leaders, with Satank, a legendary third War Chief, were formally indicted on July 1, 1871, and tried shortly thereafter, for acts arising out of the Warren Wagon Train Raid.
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case brought against the US government by the Kiowa chief Lone Wolf, who charged that Native American tribes under the Medicine Lodge Treaty had been defrauded of land by Congressional actions in violation of the treaty.
White Horse was a chief of the Kiowa. White Horse attended the council between southern plains tribes and the United States at Medicine Lodge in southern Kansas which resulted in the Medicine Lodge Treaty. Despite his attendance at the treaty signing he conducted frequent raids upon other tribes and white settlers. Follower of such elders as Guipago, Satanta and old Satank, he was often associated with Big Tree.
Guipago or Lone Wolf the Elder was the last Principal Chief of the Kiowa tribe. He was a member of the Koitsenko, the Kiowa warrior elite, and was a signer of the Little Arkansas Treaty in 1865.
Big Bow was a Kiowa war leader during the 19th century, an associate of Guipago and Satanta.
Mamante or Mamanti, also known as Swan was a Kiowa medicine man.
Horseback (1805/1810-1888) was a Nokoni Comanche chief.
Big Red Meat was a Nokoni Comanche chief and a leader of Native American resistance against White invasion during the second half of the 19th century.
Big Tree, Kiowa: Ado-eete, was a noted Kiowa warrior and chief. He was a loyal follower of the fighting chiefs party, and conducted frequent raids upon other tribes and white settlers, often being associated with Tsen-tainte.