The Indian Fighter

The Indian Fighter is a 1955 American CinemaScope and Technicolor Western film directed by Andre de Toth and based upon an original story by Robert L. Richards. The film was the first of star Kirk Douglas's Bryna Productions that was released through United Artists. The film co-stars Elsa Martinelli, Walter Matthau, Kirk Douglas's ex-wife Diana Douglas and Walter Abel. Plot Johnny Hawks is a man who made his name fighting Indians. Returning to the West after the Civil War, he must now keep wronged Sioux warriors from attacking the Oregon-bound wagon train that he is leading and the nearby fort. Tensions between the two communities are building, with Indians trading gold to the whites for whiskey, and the white men trying to find the source of the Indians' "yellow iron." Todd and Chivington, two unscrupulous white men engaged in trading whiskey for gold, shoot and kill a member of Chief Red Cloud's Lakota tribe when he refuses to tell them where the gold is. Chivington escapes, but Todd is captured. Hawks, visiting Red Cloud, fights Red Cloud's brother Gray Wolf for Todd's life and defeats him. He takes the ambitious gold-hunter back to the local fort commanded by Captain Trask, inviting the Chief to come to the fort to sign a peace treaty and see that justice done for his dead tribesman. After the treaty is signed, Hawks leads the wagon train west (including Todd and Chivington, whom Trask wants out of the area before they can make more trouble), taking it out of the way so he can see Red Cloud's daughter Onahti, with whom he is in love. Some of the tribesmen come to the train to trade game and handicrafts for manufactured goods. Chivington and Todd get a brave of weak character drunk enough to tell them where the gold comes from, despite the "oath of death" that Red Cloud required of every adult in the tribe not to reveal the location. Gray Wolf comes upon the drunken party, realizes what has happened, and is stabbed to death by Todd though he lives long enough to give a war cry, setting off a war between the white settlers, the U.S. Cavalry at the fort, and Red Cloud's band. When Johnny Hawks, en route back to the train, is attacked by Red Cloud's braves he realizes what has happened. The wagon train hightails it back to the fort, losing a few wagons along the way. The emigrants tell Captain Trask their version of what happened.