In 1878, the surviving Cheyenne natives have migrated 1,500 miles (2,414 km) from their Yellowstone homeland. At her Oklahoma homestead, their plight is witnessed by Deborah Wright, a Quaker school teacher, who takes the Cheyenne children as her students. Their trek has been accompanied by a United States Armycavalry troop headed by Captain Thomas Archer, who is engaged to Deborah. Nearby, the Cheyenne natives and Archer's troops are waiting for a congressional committee sent by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), but are informed by letter that their trip has delayed and are staying at Fort Reno.
Captain Archer calls Dull Knife and Little Wolf, two Native leaders, pledging the Bureau will continue to provide for the natives. Angered at the Bureau's slow response, Dull Knife withdraws the Cheyenne children from Deborah's school. Later that night, Deborah learns from the Spanish Woman that the Cheyenne have decided to migrate back to Yellowstone. She decides to travel with them. The next morning, Archer sees the Cheyenne have left and sends a search party with no artillery. One soldier, Second Lieutenant Scott, cares little for their exodus as his father was killed in the Fetterman Massacre in 1866.
Within a canyon, Archer's men have caught up with the Cheyenne. Little Wolf sends Red Shirt, the Spanish Woman's son, to fight against the troops. Archer sends two soldiers to search the canyon, but one is shot by Red Shirt. Major Braden takes control and has the soldiers fire two cannons; a brief fight ensues to which nine soldiers, including Braden, were killed. It is then reported in the local newspapers, who deliberately inflate the death count and depict the Cheyenne as savages. News of the attack reaches Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Interior, in Washington, D.C.
Archers sends Scott to patrol the Cheyenne, but Scott instead proceeds with an attack. Another fight erupts, in which Scott is wounded. After 500 miles (805 km), the Cheyenne begin to approach Dodge City, Kansas only to learn that white settlers have resided there. Meanwhile, news of their arrival spread in the local newspaper, which alarms the townspeople. At a nearby parlor, lawmen Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are unconcerned while the local townspeople organize a war campaign to combat the Cheyenne. Earp and Holliday deliberately lead the campaign in the wrong direction, but head back after a minor scuffle.
Months pass, and Archer, still in pursuit of the Cheyenne, recruits Sr. First Sergeant Wichowsky. By wintertime, the Cheyenne are beleaguered from their long journey, and they break into two factions: one half continues their trek, while the other half (led by Dull Knife) surrenders to Captain Henry W. Wessells Jr. at Fort Robinson and are confined to a barracks. Archer's troops arrive at Fort Robinson as well, where Archer reunites Deborah. However, Wessels intends for the Cheyenne to return to Oklahoma. Angered, Archer goes to Washington, D.C. to Secretary Schurz's office, where he pleads on behalf of the Cheyenne. Schurz agrees.
Wessells is removed from his post for drunkenly behavior, and is confined to his quarters. Before relief arrives, Dull Knife's Cheyenne faction ambush the stationed troops, leaving Wessells stunned. Sometime later, Archer and Schurz meet with Little Wolf and Dull Knife to negotiate a treaty permitting the Cheyenne to return to their homeland. Once there, Red Shirt and Little Wolf engage in a pistol duel, in which Red Shirt is killed. Little Wolf, having broken his vow never to kill another Cheyenne, ventures into self-exile. With the Cheyenne back in their homeland, Archer and Deborah decide to remain there with them.
Colonel at Victory Cave whose orders are challenged by Carl Schurz
Production
Development
John Ford long wanted to make a movie about the Cheyenne exodus. As early as 1957, he wrote a treatment with his son Patrick Ford, envisioning a small-scale drama with non-professional Indian actors. Early drafts of the script drew on Howard Fast's novel The Last Frontier. However, the film ultimately took its plot and title from Mari Sandoz's Cheyenne Autumn, which Ford preferred due to its focus on the Cheyenne. Elements of Fast's novel remain in the finished film, namely the character of Captain Archer (called Murray in the book), the depiction of Secretary Carl Schurz and the Dodge City, Kansas scenes.[3]
Reluctantly abandoning the docudrama idea, Ford wanted Anthony Quinn and Richard Boone to play Dull Knife and Little Wolf as well-known actors with some Indian ancestry. He also suggested Afro-Indigenous actor Woody Strode for a role. The studio insisted on Ford's casting Ricardo Montalbán and Gilbert Roland.[4]
The original version was 158 minutes, Ford's longest work. Warner Bros. later decided to edit the "Dodge City" sequence out of the film, reducing the running time to 145 minutes, although it was shown in theaters during the film's initial release. This sequence features James Stewart as Wyatt Earp and Arthur Kennedy as Doc Holliday. Some critics have argued that this comic episode, mostly unrelated to the rest of an otherwise serious movie, breaks the flow of the story.[5][6] It was later restored for the VHS and subsequent DVD releases.
Ford used Navajo people to portray the Cheyenne. Dialogue that is supposed to be in the "Cheyenne language" is actually Navajo. This made little difference to white audiences, but for Navajo speakers the film was amusing because the Navajo actors were openly using ribald and crude language that had nothing to do with the film. For example, during the scene where the treaty is signed, the chief's solemn speech just pokes fun at the size of the colonel's penis.[8]
Delays
According to the TCM podcast The Plot Thickens, Ford twice delayed production of the film: the first came when Ricardo Montalbán received a long-distance phone call that his eldest son had injured his neck while filling in for his youngest on his paper route. Ford and Montalbán traveled back to Los Angeles to visit his son and returned to Monument Valley the next day. Some time later, Ford paused production upon hearing news of assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
Reception
Bosley Crowther for The New York Times praised the film highly, calling it "a beautiful and powerful motion picture that stunningly combines a profound and passionate story of mistreatment of American Indians with some of the most magnificent and energetic cavalry-and-Indian lore ever put upon the screen."[5] He was disappointed, however, that after the humorous (if "superfluous") Dodge City sequence, "the picture does not rise again to its early integrity and authenticity", and the climax is "neither effective and convincing drama nor is it faithful to the novel".[5]Variety disagreed, however, calling it "a rambling, episodic account" in which "the original premise of the Mari Sandoz novel is lost sight of in a wholesale insertion of extraneous incidents which bear little or no relation to the subject."[9]The New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann wrote "the acting is bad, the dialogue trite and predictable, the pace funereal, the structure fragmented, the climaxes puny".[10]
A review in Time magazine stated, "Cheyenne Autumn has everything it takes to make a great western epic, except greatness ... In this wayward, 3-hr. movie version, Director John Ford dehydrates history and tosses in some sappy ideas of his own. The worst of them asserts that the Indians were accompanied by a conscientious Quaker lass (Carroll Baker) obviously all done up to join a grand ole opry."[11] In a retrospective review, Richard Brody of The New Yorker cited the "rueful, elegiac grandeur of John Ford's final Western".[12]
The September 1965 issue of MAD satirized it as "Cheyenne Awful."[13]
Before the release of Cheyenne Autumn, a 19-minute documentary, Cheyenne Autumn Trail, was put into production. Narrated by James Stewart, the short featured clips from the feature, recounting the historical events depicted in the film, depicting memorials to Little Wolf and Dull Knife and presenting life on the reservation in 1964 for descendants of the Cheyenne who participated in the Northern Cheyenne Exodus. Cheyenne Autumn Trail is included as an extra feature on the Cheyenne Autumn DVD issued in 2006.
^Schwartz, Dennis (January 2, 2006). "A big mess". Ozus' World Movie Reviews. Archived from the original on July 30, 2012. Retrieved September 9, 2013.
^D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah (1st ed.). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN9781423605874.
^Real, Michael R. (1996). Exploring Media Culture: A Guide. SAGE. p. 271. ISBN0803958773.
^"AFI's 10 Top 10 Nominees"(PDF). Archived from the original on July 16, 2011. Retrieved August 19, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
