The opening narration states that the events in the picture really happened, but I'll take that with a few grains of salt. One thing I can attest to is that I would never have recognized any of the actors portraying the principal characters here. Robert Wagner at twenty five years old looked impossibly young and he'd already appeared in a dozen films. When the opening credits rolled I saw the names of Jeffrey Hunter and Hugh O'Brian, but when the story got going I forgot about that and it never occurred to me they had the roles of Little Dog and American Horse. I would have lost a bet on O'Brian ever playing an Indian in a picture. I'll just have to go back and check it out once again.
The story throws a bit of a curve ball at the viewer with respect to Josh Tanner's (Wagner) romantic prospects. What looks like a relationship developing between him and Ann Magruder (Virginia Leith) is suddenly turned upside down when Cheyenne squaw Appearing Day (Debra Paget) comes on the scene. I thought she was quite attractive but that whole business about being worth two hundred ponies seemed like a bit of a stretch to me. Fortunately, her father Broken Hand (Eduard Franz) didn't hold Tanner to it.
It turns out that the title of the picture refers to a Cheyenne challenge against honoring the treaty Broken Hand has signed with the Cavalry. Little Dog and American Horse take up the fight but it's a short lived one as they are both dispatched summarily, 'Horse' by his own Chief Broken Hand who saw fit to watch his son die fighting the white man.
The picture closes stating that Tanner and Appearing Day married, with Broken Hand living long enough to witness their grown son attend the military academy at West Point. I tried looking it up, but I think a few more grains of salt were sprinkled on this tale as it ended.
The story throws a bit of a curve ball at the viewer with respect to Josh Tanner's (Wagner) romantic prospects. What looks like a relationship developing between him and Ann Magruder (Virginia Leith) is suddenly turned upside down when Cheyenne squaw Appearing Day (Debra Paget) comes on the scene. I thought she was quite attractive but that whole business about being worth two hundred ponies seemed like a bit of a stretch to me. Fortunately, her father Broken Hand (Eduard Franz) didn't hold Tanner to it.
It turns out that the title of the picture refers to a Cheyenne challenge against honoring the treaty Broken Hand has signed with the Cavalry. Little Dog and American Horse take up the fight but it's a short lived one as they are both dispatched summarily, 'Horse' by his own Chief Broken Hand who saw fit to watch his son die fighting the white man.
The picture closes stating that Tanner and Appearing Day married, with Broken Hand living long enough to witness their grown son attend the military academy at West Point. I tried looking it up, but I think a few more grains of salt were sprinkled on this tale as it ended.