Begins powerfully with the Sioux triumph over General Custer at Little Big Horn and goes on to center around three powerful men. Charles Eastman is a young, Dartmouth-educated Sioux doctor. Sitting Bull is the proud Lakota chief who refuses to submit to U.S. government policies designed to strip his people of thier identity, dignity and sacred land. Senator Henry Dawes is one of the men responsible for the government policy on Indian affairs. While Eastman and schoolteacher Elaine Goodale work to imporve live for the Sioux on the reservation, Senator Dawes lobbies President Grant for kinder Indian treatment.
By 1876, most of the nation's American Indians had been forcibly relocated to reservation land. In the Dakota Territory, Red Cloud had settled his people on the great Sioux Reservation, becoming wards of the government. Other Sioux leaders saw this as defeat and continued to live in the traditional way, with legendary resistance. Then an economic depression struck, and gold was discovered in the Black Hills--on Sioux land. In this film, the lives of Charles Eastman-a Dartmouth-educated, Sioux doctor; Senator Henry Dawes-member of the Committee on Indian Affairs; and Sitting Bull intersect in a manner that seems fated. The question that faces the government and the Sioux seems to leave two answers: assimilation versus extermination? It is answered by the assassination of Sitting Bull and the massacre of hundreds of Indian men, women, and children by the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek on Dec. 29, 1890.