Cheyenne Autumn

John Ford’s final Western is an account of the defiant 1887 migration of 300 Cheyenne Indians from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming., Large-scale frontier epic telling the true story of a band of Cheyenne Indians who, starved nearly to extinction on an inhospitable reservation, embark on the long trek back to their distant ancestral homelands in Wyoming, despite opposition from the US Army. The movie revives old hatreds – and the threat of war., Epic John Ford western chronicling the unjust treatment of the Cheyenne Indian tribe driven from their Wyoming homeland by settlers., Veteran director John Ford’s spectacular western stars Richard Widmark and Carroll Baker as members of a proud Cheyenne tribe desperate to find reserves in the barren desert., Large-scale frontier epic telling the true story of a band of Cheyenne Indians who, starved nearly to extinction on an inhospitable reservation, embark on the long trek back to their distant ancestral homelands in Wyoming, despite opposition from the US Army. Their journey revives old hatreds – and the threat of war., Perhaps feeling guilty at the way he’d portrayed Native Americans in his previous films, director John Ford’s final western is a fact-based work concerning the late-19th-century travails of a group of Northern Cheyenne people. By 1878, 300 of the Cheyenne have had enough of the woefully inadequate, barren reservation allotted to them by the US government, so chiefs Little Wolf and Dull Knife decide to lead their people to their ancestral homeland by the Yellowstone River. Wanting to stamp on this rebellion as quickly and forcefully as possible, the government dispatches cavalry officer Captain Thomas Archer to impel the Native Americans back to their purgatorial existence. But America’s rulers don’t count on their man developing a keen sympathy for those he’s been sent to subjugate… The movie was shot, as so many of Ford’s westerns were, in Monument Valley (on the borders of Utah and Arizona), and remains a testament to the plight of the country’s original inhabitants, even despite the oddly jarring comedic central section set in Dodge City., (1964) Perhaps feeling guilty at the way he’d portrayed Native Americans in his previous films, director John Ford’s final western is a fact-based work concerning the late-19th-century travails of a group of Northern Cheyenne people. By 1878, 300 of the Cheyenne have had enough of the woefully inadequate, barren reservation allotted to them by the US government, so chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland) decide to lead their people to their ancestral homeland by the Yellowstone River. Wanting to stamp on this rebellion as quickly and forcefully as possible, the government dispatches cavalry officer Captain Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark) to impel the Native Americans back to their purgatorial existence. But America’s rulers don’t count on their man developing a keen sympathy for those he’s been sent to subjugate… The movie was shot, as so many of Ford’s westerns were, in Monument Valley (on the borders of Utah and Arizona), and remains a testament to the plight of the country’s original inhabitants, even despite the oddly jarring comedic central section set in Dodge City. Also starring James Stewart, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Edward G Robinson. M,W,S., John Ford’s last western film, Cheyenne Autumn was allegedly produced to compensate for the hundreds of Native Americans who had bitten the dust in Ford’s earlier films (that was the director’s story, anyway). Set in 1887, the film recounts the defiant migration of 300 Cheyennes from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming. They have done this at the behest of chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland), peaceful souls who have been driven to desperate measures because the US government has ignored their pleas for food and shelter. Since the Cheyennes’ trek is in defiance of their treaty, Captain Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark), who agrees with the Indians in principle, reluctantly leads his troops in pursuit of the tribe. While there was never any intention to shed blood, the white press finds it politically expedient to distort the Cheyennes’ action into a declaration of war. Thanks to the cruelties of such chauvinistic whites as Captain Oscar Wessels (Karl Malden), the Cheyennes are forced to defend themselves–and whenever Indians take arms against whites in the 1880s, it’s usually misrepresented as a massacre. Only the intervention of US secretary of the interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson) prevents the hostilities from erupting into wholesale bloodshed. Based on a novel by Mari Sandoz, Cheyenne Autumn is a cinematic elegy–not only for the beleaguered Cheyennes, but for John Ford’s fifty years in pictures. It is weakest when arbitrarily throwing in a wearisome romance between Richard Widmark and pacifistic schoolmarm Carroll Baker, who out of sympathy for the Indians has joined them in their 1500-mile westward journey. When the Warner Bros. people decided that the film ran too long, they chopped out the wholly unnecessary but very funny episode involving a poker-obsessed Wyatt Earp (James Stewart). Contrary to popular belief, this episode was included in the earliest non-roadshow prints of Cheyenne Autumn; the scene was excised only when the film went into its second and third runs in 1966 (it has since been restored)., Perhaps feeling guilty at the way he’d portrayed Native Americans in his previous films, director John Ford’s final western is a fact-based work concerning the late-19th-century travails of a group of Northern Cheyenne people. By 1878, 300 of the Cheyenne have had enough of the woefully inadequate, barren reservation allotted to them by the US government, so chiefs Little Wolf and Dull Knife decide to lead their people to their ancestral homeland by the Yellowstone River. Wanting to stamp on this rebellion as quickly and forcefully as possible, the government dispatches cavalry officer Captain Thomas Archer to impel the Native Americans back to their purgatorial existence. But America’s rulers don’t count on their man developing a keen sympathy for those he’s been sent to subjugate… The movie was shot, as so many of Ford’s westerns were, in Monument Valley (on the borders of Utah and Arizona), and remains a testament to the plight of the country’s original inhabitants, even despite the oddly jarring comedic central section set in Dodge City. Also starring James Stewart, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Edward G Robinson., This first Western in the Monday Celluloid Night is a 1964 Western from John Ford, his last of a series about the Cheyenne tribe of Indians. A magnificant cast is headed by Richard Widmark and includes Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, James Stewart and Arthur Kennedy., John Ford’s final Western is an account of the defiant 1887 migration of 300 Cheyenne Indians from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming. John Ford’s final Western is an account of the defiant 1887 migration of 300 Cheyenne Indians from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming., Imprisoned on a squalid reservation in Oklahoma, the last of the Cheyenne Indians escape and head for their old homelands in Wyoming, accompanied by Quaker missionary Deborah Wright (Carroll Baker).