A Man Called Horse

During the early 1800s, English Lord John Morgan (Richard Harris) is hunting in the Dakotas, but he is captured by a group of Sioux warriors. Morgan's guides are killed, but he is spared by Sioux Chief Yellow Hand (Manu Tupou), who marvels at Morgan's blond hair. Brought to Yellow Hand's tribal village, Morgan has to endure physical abuse and mockery at the hands of women and children who consider him to be a wild horse. Restrained by a rope around his neck, Morgan is given as a gift to an old squaw, Buffalo Cow Head (Dame Judith Anderson), to be her slave and help her with daily chores. In the village, Morgan meets Running Deer (Corinna Tsopei), the beautiful young sister of Chief Yellow Hand. Morgan witnesses the traditional courtship process when Running Deer is asked in marriage by a tribe member who presents Yellow Hand with gifts in return for his sister's hand in marriage. Morgan starts to fall in love with her. Also in the village is half-breed, Batise (Jean Gascon), whose mother was Sioux and father was French. Batise becomes Morgan's friend and interpreter. Batise advises Morgan against escaping citing his own escape attempt when he was re-captured and hamstrung by the savage Sioux. Despite these warnings, Morgan tries to escape several times, but he is re-captured. He decides to bide his time for another escape opportunity. When a rival Shoshone war party approaches the Sioux village, Morgan kills two of the Shoshone scouts, winning the respect of his Sioux captors. Instead of escaping, Morgan plans to learn the ways of the Sioux, become a warrior, and gain his place amongst them. But this would require much more than killing a few Shoshone scouts. Lord John Morgan's true ordeal is just beginning.

In the 1840s, trappers with government backing push the Yellow Hands Sioux off their sacred land; they retreat into an apocalyptic spirituality, passively waiting for supernatural wrath to descend on their usurpers. Meanwhile, in England, Lord John Morgan feels his spirit weaken, so he returns to America to live again with the Yellow Hand. Finding them dispirited, he invigorates them as well as himself through self-imposed torture and other rituals. Once he convinces the clan to take direct action, Horse must devise a strategy to take the trappers' fort. The clan's women and boys take on special assignments to aid the assault to regain the sacred land.

Englishman John Morgan lives 30 years as a Sioux named Man Called Horse. In 1874, gold is discovered in the Black Hills, on tribal land guaranteed to the Sioux in the Laramie Treaty of 1868. Settlers pour in and White provocateurs try to prompt the Sioux to break the treaty (so that all-out war with the US forces will result in the land no longer being under Sioux control). They murder and make it look like Indians were responsible. Man Called Horse helps maintain calm among the tribe, but when tragedy befalls him, it's left to his son Koda and Koda's lover, a Crow named Red Wing, to devise a strategy to keep the argonauts at bay and the Black Hills sacred.