The plot, which is based on events covered by several chapters of Brown's book, other sources, and on real events, revolves around four main characters: Charles Eastman né "Ohiyesa" (Beach), a young, mixed-race Sioux doctor educated at Dartmouth and Boston University, who is held up as proof of the success of assimilation; Sitting Bull (Schellenberg), the Sioux chief who refuses to submit to U.S. government policies designed to strip his people of their identity, their dignity and their sacred land, the gold-laden Black Hills of the Dakotas; U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes (Quinn), an architect of government policy for allotment of Indian lands to individual households to force adoption of subsistence farming; and Red Cloud (Tootoosis), whose decision to make peace with the American government and go to a reservation disturbed Sitting Bull.