Sitting Bull(1954)

Though not particularly well strung together, this offers us an interesting look at the build up to the famous Battle of the Little Big Horn from more of the Sioux perspective. Dale Robertson is ("Parrish"), an officer who has seen at first hand the shocking treatment of these peoples on their reservations by the crooked and corrupt agents ostensibly there to support and protect them, but who actually starve and humiliate them at any opportunity whilst creaming profits for themselves. He is posted to a remote agency where he falls foul of one such agent resulting in his demotion. As the war drums begin to beat in earnest, President Grant (John Hamilton) gives "Parrish" one last chance to try and broker a peace between the two sides and after initial success, it all goes a bit pear shaped... What this does depict is the crass ineptitude of "Col. Custer" (played here by Douglas Kennedy who looks like he has spent much of his life in a tanning salon) and of the integrity of the Sioux as they do their best to avoid war. Robertson isn't bad here, but the inevitable tendency to always have some sort of distracting romantic element gets in the way of the narrative. The battle scenes are good, though and I quite enjoyed it.