The film is an entertainment not a history lesson but the broad picture of the advance into Indian territory from Wyoming into Montana along the Bozeman is not misleading - nor is Chivington's complicity in his incitement of the Cheyenne, Carrington's qualities as an officer, or Fetterman's fool-hardiness historically wrong or misplaced. Lastly, this was made in the cinema era of Indians as bloodthirsty savages - well before 'Cheyenne Autumn' and the sixties' discovery of revisionist Western history. Bridger's parting comment that it wasn't anything in the innate qualities of the American fighting man that won them the battle but the introduction of a superior arms technology is an astute assessment of the situation in 1868. For the rest, the opening commentary that the Americans would keep on coming regardless is the unavoidable truth of the matter.
