Prepared by Wayne Zoller
Released by Warner Brothers in 1964, John Ford Production.
Running Time: 155-157 minutes.
Written by James R. Webb, suggested by Cheyenne Autumn by Mari Sandoz.
Directed by John Ford.
Produced by John Ford-Bernard Smith.
Cinematography by William H. Clothier.
Editing by Otho Lovering.
Music by Alex North.
Cast
Captain Thomas Archer: Richard Widmark
Deborah Wright: Carroll Baker
Wyatt Earp: James Stewart
Secretary of Interior Carl Schurz: Edward G. Robinson
Captain Wessels: Karl Mauldin
Little Wolf: Ricardo Montalban
Dull Knife: Gilbert Roland
Spanish Woman: Delores Del Rio
Red Shirt: Sal Mineo
Tall tree: Victor Jory
2nd Lieutenant Scott: Patrick Wayne
lst Sergeant Stanislaus Wichowsky: Mike Mazurki
Major Braden: George O'Brien
Homer: Ken Curtis
Trail Boss: Shug Fisher
Pawnee Woman: Carmen D'Antonio
Deborah's Uncle: Walter Baldwin
Little Bird: Nancy Hseuh*
Trail Hand: Chuck Robertson
Running Deer: Moonbeam*
Medicine Man: Many Mules Son*
Trooper Plumtree: Ben Johnson
Trooper Smith: Harry Carey,Jr.
Telegrapher: Bing Russel
l Woman: Louise Montana
Newspaper Publisher: Charles Seel
Troopers: Dan Borzage, Dan Carr James O'Hara, David Miller, Ted Mapes, John
McKee
*Denotes Indian Actors Film Reviews
Variety- 7 October, 1964.
Crowther, Boseley, New York Times Film-Review 24 December, 1964.
Bibliography Of Relevant Materials
Bogdanovich, Peter. John-Ford, University Of California Press, 1967.
Grinnell, George Bird. The Cheyenne Indians, Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., New York 1 9 6 2 .
Sandoz, Mari. Cheyenne Autumn, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York 1953.
Svingen, Orlan J. The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation 1877-1900, University Press of Colorado, 1993.
Cheyenne Autumn from the
Internet Movie Database
Bibliography of
Northern Cheyenne History
Dull Knife
Little Wolf
"I had wanted to make it for a long time. I've killed more Indians than Custer, Beecher and Chivington put together, and people in Europe always want to know about the Indians. There are two sides to every story, but I wanted to show their p oint of view for a change. Let's face it, we've treated them very badly- it's a blot on our shield; we've cheated and robbed, killed, murdered, massacred and everything else, but they kill one white man and, God, out come the troops."
This is the answer given by John Ford to Peter Bogdanovich when asked if Cheyenne Autumn is an apology to the Indians for the way that Ford had previously portrayed them in his films.
Film Summary
In the fall of 1878 a group of Northern Cheyennes who had signed treaties and surrendered to the Army, were sent to a reservation in Indian Territory or present day Oklahoma. A large group of Southern Cheyenne were already living there and the idea was t o put all of the Cheyenne together. However this was a different climate than the Northerners were used to, rations were short and often delayed, as were the clothes and blankets that were part of the goods promised to the Cheyennes. Also it had been th e understanding of the Northern Cheyennes that if they found that they did not like the reservation in Indian Territory they could go back to their northern homes in Wyoming.
These Northern Cheyennes had been allies of the Sioux or Lakota, had shared reservation space with these Indians, had intermarried with them and taken on some of their customs and language and so were seen as different by the Southern Cheyennes who insult ed them and resented their presence. The film starts with the expected arrival of a congressional committee to investigate the situation. They fail to arrive.
The Cheyennes see this as the final lie and decide to leave on an exodus back to their homeland. A Quaker teacher, Deborah Wright, decides to accompany them to care for her students. The cavalry that begin the pursuit of the fleeing tribespeople is led by Captain Archer, who loves Deborah and is sympathetic to the plight of the Indians but has his duty to perform. The flight is punctuated by fights with the cavalry, and the death of the old chief, Tall Tree, who passes on the Sacred Bundle to Little Wolf, one of the two sub-chiefs, rather than to Dull Knife, the other leader. A sub-plot involves the seeds of later tragedy in the seduction of one of Little Wolf's wives by Red Shirt, son of Dull Knife.
During the flight and the fighting, Deborah learns that some of her conceptions about the Cheyenne have been wrong, that they are more like Archer's conception of them than she had realized. Archer also becomes more sympathetic to the Cheyenne's problems , eventually deciding to risk his career by taking leave and going to Washington to persuade Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz to intervene on their behalf .
Starving and faced with early winter, the band splits in Nebraska, Little Wolf's group going on, while Dull Knife and his group surrender at Fort Robinson. This group is informed that they must return to Indian Territory. They refuse and threaten mass s uicide rather than go back. The commandant of the fort denies them food, water and heat in an effort to force them to comply. Using weapons they had concealed, the Indians escape, with killing on both sides, then manage to get further North and rejoin Little Wolf's group. But the Army has also tracked them down and surrounded them, are about to start shooting when Archer and Schurz arrive, forcing the Army to allow a parley, and get a reluctant agreement by the two chiefs that they wi ll let Schurz attempt to get their request complied with, which he manages to do. The Cheyenne do return to their homeland. Little Wolf kills Red Shirt, and having killed another Cheyenne, has to give up the Sacred Bundle to Dull Knife and go into exile. Deborah and ARcher get back together, the implication being that they will marry, their feelings for the Cheyennes having bridged their differing ideals. But they give up the Cheyenne girl that Deborah had sort of adopted so that the girl can go home as have her people.
The film imposes this love story onto the story of the Cheyennes, mainly to make it saleable to a wider audience at the time. It also makes a narrator of the flight out of Archer, who acts as the immediate white mediator when the Army, the Indian Bureau, white society have forced the Cheyennes to abandon much of their culture in an effort to survive. Other cultural aspects arise in the persons of the younger men and women of the Cheyenne who can no longer court and become wed in the customary way, the young men can't gain stature by traditional means, and the culture is being torn apart by an indiffer ent but stronger culture that is imposing its views onto the Cheyennes.
Historical validity is set aside in the face of the fact that while this group fled the reservation, over 600 remained. In fact a group from the North was being escorted to the reservation while the Little Wolf-Dull Knife group was fleeing North. Also t here was no one officer who persuaded Schurz to take action, which he didn't personally do. There were sympathetic army men who did think the Cheyennes should return to their northern home. It actually took a long struggle that lasted up to the turn of the century to finally allow all the Northern Cheyennes to go to the area they wanted to live. In the process the culture was further attacked and the happy ending of the film was actually ha rd-won and time-delayed.
Little Wolf did indeed kill a fellow Cheyenne, but not a son of Dull Knife. It was a man who had hung around his family and had centered his attentions on a daughter that finally drove Little Wolf to kill the man. There are various names given to this m an, either Thin Elk or Starving Elk. Little Wolf did then go into exile.
The real Indians who play roles in this film are Navahos, not Cheyennes and the actual area is very unlike Monument Valley where Ford set it. The scenery of the valley and Ford's use of it to create beautiful scenes is the reason for its use rather than a more accurate, but duller appearing, background that would have been more real.