Beginning just after the bloody Sioux victory over General Custer at Little Big Horn, the story is told through two unique perspectives: Charles Eastman, a young, white-educated Sioux doctor held up as living proof of the alleged success of assimilation, and Sitting Bull the proud Lakota chief whose tribe won the American Indians’ last major victory at Little Big Horn.
Chicago hotel clerk Frank Harris dreams of life as a cowboy, and he gets his chance when, jilted by the father of the woman he loves, he joins Tom Reece and his cattle-driving outfit. Soon, though, the tenderfoot finds out life on the range is neither what he expected nor what he's been looking for...
A report reaches the US Army Cavalry that the Apache leader Ulzana has left his reservation with a band of followers. A compassionate young officer, Lieutenant DeBuin, is given a small company to find him and bring him back; accompanying the troop is McIntosh, an experienced scout, and Ke-Ni-Tay, an Apache guide. Ulzana massacres, rapes and loots across the countryside; and as DeBuin encounters the remains of his victims, he is compelled to learn from McIntosh and to confront his own naivity and hidden prejudices.
Homesteaders Mace Corbin and Clyde Moss pick up much needed dynamite and begin a journey to transport it from an army fort to their homes, hiring a crew of ex-soldiers just released from the army prison. Mace knows he's got his work cut out for him with unstable dynamite, undisciplined hired hands and possible hostile Indians but he doesn't have the slightest hint that his trusted friend Clyde has betrayed him.
The title insurrection in this low-budget Whip Wilson Western consists mainly of Iron Eyes Cody, who is conspiring to raid the wagon trains with crooked sheriff Marshall Reed and nefarious Indian agent Forrest Taylor.
Five passengers in a stagecoach are abandoned by their driver in the desert. Trying to survive, they struggle with illness, thirst, hunger, and the threats posed both by one another and the local Indigenous peoples.