Movies: “Cheyenne Autumn”

Oct. 3, 1964 - Opening today is “Cheyenne Autumn,” an epic Western film starring Richard Widmark, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. It tells the story of a factual event, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878-79, told in “Hollywood style” using a great deal of artistic license. The film was directed by John Ford.

In 1878, Chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalbán) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland) lead over 300 starved and weary Cheyenne Indians from their reservation in the Oklahoma Territory to their former traditional home in Wyoming. The U.S. Government sees this as an act of rebellion, and the sympathetic Captain Thomas Archer (Widmark) of the U.S. Army is forced to lead his troops in an attempt to stop the tribe. As the press misrepresents the natives’ motives and goals for their trek as malicious, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson), tries to prevent violence from erupting between the Army and the natives.

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, however, namely the character of Captain Archer (called Murray in the book), the depiction of Secretary Schurz, and the Dodge City, Kansas scenes.

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