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Plot

In 1878, the surviving Cheyenne natives have migrated 1,500 miles (2,414 km) from their Yellowstone homeland. At her Oklahoma homestead, their plight is witnessed by Deborah Wright, a Quaker school teacher, who takes the Cheyenne children as her students. Their trek has been accompanied by a United States Army cavalry troop headed by Captain Thomas Archer, who is engaged to Deborah. Nearby, the Cheyenne natives and Archer's troops are waiting for a congressional committee sent by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), but are informed by letter that their trip has delayed and are staying at Fort Reno.

Captain Archer calls Dull Knife and Little Wolf, two Native leaders, pledging the BIA will continue to provide for the natives. Angered at the BIA's slow response, Dull Knife withdraws the Cheyenne children from Deborah's school. Later that night, Deborah learns from Spanish Woman that the Cheyenne have decided to migrate back to Yellowstone. She decides to travel with them. The next morning, Archer sees the Cheyenne have left and sends a search party with no artillery. One soldier, Second Lieutenant Scott, cares little for their exodus, as his father was killed in the Fetterman massacre in 1866.

Within a canyon, Archer's men have caught up with the Cheyenne. Little Wolf sends Red Shirt, Spanish Woman's son, to fight against the troops. Archer sends two soldiers to search the canyon, but one is shot by Red Shirt. Major Braden takes control and has the soldiers fire two cannons; a brief fight ensues in which nine soldiers, including Braden, were killed. It is then reported in the local newspapers, which deliberately inflate the death count and depict the Cheyenne as savages. News of the attack reaches Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Interior, in Washington, DC.

Archer sends Scott to patrol the Cheyenne, but Scott instead proceeds with an attack. Another fight erupts, in which Scott is wounded. After 500 miles (805 km), the Cheyenne begin to approach Dodge City, Kansas, only to learn that White settlers have resided there. Meanwhile, news of their arrival spread in the local newspaper, which alarms the townspeople. At a nearby parlor, lawmen Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are unconcerned, while the local townspeople organize a war campaign to combat the Cheyenne. Earp and Holliday deliberately lead the campaign in the wrong direction, but head back after a minor scuffle.

Months pass, and Archer, still in pursuit of the Cheyenne, recruits Sr. First Sergeant Wichowsky. By wintertime, the Cheyenne are beleaguered from their long journey, and they break into two factions; one half continues their trek, while the other half (led by Dull Knife) surrenders to Captain Henry W. Wessells Jr. at Fort Robinson and are confined to a barracks. Archer's troops arrive at Fort Robinson, as well, where Archer reunites Deborah, but Wessels intends for the Cheyenne to return to Oklahoma. Angered, Archer goes to Washington, DC, to Secretary Schurz's office, where he pleads on behalf of the Cheyenne. Schurz agrees.

Wessells is removed from his post for drunkenly behavior, and is confined to his quarters. Before relief arrives, Dull Knife's Cheyenne faction ambush the stationed troops, leaving Wessells stunned. Sometime later, Archer and Schurz meet with Little Wolf and Dull Knife to negotiate a treaty permitting the Cheyenne to return to their homeland. Once there, Red Shirt and Little Wolf engage in a rifle duel, in which Red Shirt is killed. Little Wolf, having broken his vow never to kill another Cheyenne, ventures into self-exile. With the Cheyenne back in their homeland, Archer and Deborah decide to remain there with them.

Development

John Ford long wanted to make a movie about the Cheyenne exodus, telling future director Peter Bogdanovich during filming: "I had wanted to make it for a long time. I've killed more Indians than Custer, Beecher and Chivington put together, and people in Europe always want to know about the Indians. There are two sides to every story, but I wanted to show their point of view for a change." He became interested after reading Mari Sandoz's book Cheyenne Autumn when it was published in 1953. As early as 1957, he wrote a treatment with screenwriter Dudley Nichols and then his son Patrick Ford, after filming The Searchers (1956). Early drafts of the script drew inspiration from Sandoz's book and Howard Fast's 1941 novel The Last Frontier. However, the film rights to Fast's novel were unavailable as Columbia Pictures had acquired them for Sidney Buchman. Columbia's project never advanced into production due to accusations made that Buchman and Fast were alleged Communists during the Hollywood blacklist and outside pressure from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

By 1962, Ford reignited his interest in the Cheyenne exodus after collaborating with Bernard Smith on How the West Was Won (1962). They pitched their project to several Hollywood studios, including Warner Bros. Pictures, who passed on the project. Smith went back to Warner Bros., telling its co-founder Jack L. Warner that My Fair Lady (1964) was too expensive of a project and a John Ford western would work as an insurance policy, being "a picture that has a guaranteed audience." Convinced, Warner approved the project with a production budget totaled at $4.2 million, providing the allocated funds to shoot in Super Panavision 70.

Ford then hired James R. Webb, who had written the screenplay to How the West Was Won (1962), to write the script for Cheyenne Autumn. According to Howard Fast, Ford handed Webb a copy of Fast's novel, falsely stating it was public domain. When Columbia Pictures received a copy of Webb's script, they filed a plagiarism suit against Warner Bros. Both studios settled out of court, with Warner Bros. paying Columbia an undisclosed settlement. Regardless, 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, namely the character of Captain Archer (called Murray in the book), the depiction of Secretary Carl Schurz and the Dodge City, Kansas scenes.

In July 1963, The New York Times reported its working title was The Long Flight and stated that Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Richard Widmark and Carroll Baker had been assigned the principal roles. The production was to begin on October 1. Ford told the publication, "I've killed more Indians than anyone since Custer. This is their side." Tracy however backed out of the project, stating he did not like the script. Ford turned to his second choice, Edward G. Robinson. Stewart was cast as Wyatt Earp, in which Ford told the actor the sequence between him and Arthur Kennedy would be comic relief from the heavily dramatic storyline.

To portray the indigenous Cheyenne, Ford had wanted Anthony Quinn and Richard Boone to play Dull Knife and Little Wolf as well-known actors with some Indian ancestry. He also suggested Afro-Indigenous actor Woody Strode for a role. Evidently, Ford cast several Mexican and Italian actors, including Sal Mineo, Gilbert Roland, Ricardo Montalbán, and Dolores Del Rio as the principal tribal leaders.

Ford used Navajo people to portray the Cheyenne. Dialogue that is supposed to be in the "Cheyenne language" is actually Navajo. This made little difference to white audiences, but for Navajo communities the film became very popular because the Navajo actors were openly using ribald and crude language that had nothing to do with the film. For example, during the scene where the treaty is signed, the chief's solemn speech just pokes fun at the size of the colonel's penis. Some academics now consider this an important moment in the development of Native American identity because they are able to mock Hollywood's historical interpretation of the American West.

Critical reaction

Bosley Crowther for The New York Times praised the film highly, calling it "a beautiful and powerful motion picture that stunningly combines a profound and passionate story of mistreatment of American Indians with some of the most magnificent and energetic cavalry-and-Indian lore ever put upon the screen." He was disappointed, however, that after the humorous (if "superfluous") Dodge City sequence, "the picture does not rise again to its early integrity and authenticity", and the climax is "neither effective and convincing drama nor is it faithful to the novel". Whitney Williams of Variety disagreed, however, calling it "a rambling, episodic account" in which "the original premise of the Mari Sandoz novel is lost sight of in a wholesale insertion of extraneous incidents which bear little or no relation to the subject." The New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann wrote "the acting is bad, the dialogue trite and predictable, the pace funereal, the structure fragmented, the climaxes puny".

A review in Time magazine stated, "Cheyenne Autumn has everything it takes to make a great western epic, except greatness ... In this wayward, 3-hr. movie version, Director John Ford dehydrates history and tosses in some sappy ideas of his own. The worst of them asserts that the Indians were accompanied by a conscientious Quaker lass (Carroll Baker) obviously all done up to join a grand ole opry." Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times felt the cinematography was "often magnificent" and noted the film was "more serious" than How the West Was Won. However, he was critical of the film's "unconscionably long" run time, and felt the Dodge City sequence was "out of place as an entr'acte". In a retrospective review, Richard Brody of The New Yorker cited the "rueful, elegiac grandeur of John Ford's final Western".

The September 1965 issue of MAD satirized it as "Cheyenne Awful."

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:

Nominated Western Film

Cheyenne Autumn

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