Plot
The main characters are Cochise (Jeff Chandler) and Tom Jeffords (James Stewart). The film is based on the actions of these historical figures, but tells their story in dramatized form. As the movie begins, Jeffords comes upon a wounded Indian, a 14-year-old Apache boy dying from buckshot wounds in his back. Jeffords gives the boy water and heals his wounds. The boy's tribesmen appear and are at first hostile, but due to Jeffords' treatment of the boy decide to let him go free. However a group of gold prospectors are spotted and Jeffords is gagged, tied to a tree and made to watch as the Apaches attack the prospectors and torture the survivors. The warriors then let him go but warn him not to enter Apache territory again.
When Jeffords returns to Tucson he encounters a prospector who escaped the ambush. When he corrects the man's exaggerated account of the attack, another man, Ben Slade (Will Geer) asks how he knows what happened. Tom describes how he found the boy and the following events. Slade is incredulous and doesn't see why Jeffords didn't kill the boy. Jeffords is later asked to scout for the army but refuses.
Jeffords learns Apache, how to make and read smoke signals and plans to go to Cochise's stronghold on behalf of his friend, Milt (Arthur Hunnicut) who is in charge of the mail service in Tucson. The Apaches have killed many couriers and halted the delivery of mail for years.
Jeffords enters the Apache stronghold with the aid of smoke signals and begins a parley with Cochise, comparing the mail service to smoke signals. Cochise agrees to let the couriers through. Tom meets a young Apache girl, Sonseeahray (Debra Paget) and begins to fall in love.
The Apaches stay true to their word and the mail riders are able to ride to Tucson. However Cochise did not agree to full peace and an army wagon train is massacred. When the survivors arrive in town Jeffords is almost lynched as a traitor before he is saved by General Oliver Howard (Basil Ruysdael) who recruits Tom to negotiate peace with Cochise. Howard says that his troops call him "Bible-reading Howard". On questioning by Jeffords about the biblical implications for the Indians, Howard condemns racism, saying that the Bible "says nothing about pigmentation of the skin." Jeffords tells him to read the Bible for him, "because I like the way you read it."
Jeffords manages to broker peace with Cochise but the Apaches splinter, a group led by Geronimo (Jay Silverheels) oppose the treaty and leave the stronghold. Tom accompanies the first stagecoach to leave Tucson during the 'testing time' of three months set out by Cochise. Geronimo and his renegades ambush the coach as it stops at a river. Jeffords rides off to seek help from Cochise and the stagecoach is saved.
Tom and Sonseeahray marry and have several days of tranquility. One day when Jeffords is getting an archery lesson from Cochise Ben Slade's son arrives, guarded by two Apaches. He spins a story about his horses being stolen by Cochise's Apaches, he denies this but Jeffords asks him to go along with the boy to prove Slade, a famous hater of the Apaches, wrong. Slade and a gang of men from Tucson ambush Cochise, Tom and Sonseeahray. Jeffords tells Cochise to run while he attempts to hold off the men. Tom is wounded and knocked unconscious and Sonseeahray is killed. Cochise dispatches several of the men including both of the Slades, and goes to gather his warriors. The remaining men from Tucson head for Mexico as the army will now surely hunt them down as criminals. Jeffords regains consciousness as Cochise returns and prevents Tom from killing one of the wounded men. He still backs the peace treaty. Howard and the army pay their respects at the Apache camp, and assure Jeffords that Sonseeahray's death will not be in vain. Jeffords leaves to wander the West on his own with the assertion that 'the death of Sonseeahray had put a seal upon the peace' and 'from that day on wherever I went - in the cities, among the Apaches, in the mountains - I always remembered my wife was with me'.
Read more about this topic: Broken Arrow (1950 film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)