Cheyenne Autumn
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Ford
Screenplay by	James R. Webb
Based on	Cheyenne Autumn by Mari Sandoz
Produced by	Bernard Smith
Starring	Richard Widmark Carroll Baker Karl Malden Sal Mineo Dolores del Río Ricardo Montalbán Gilbert Roland Arthur Kennedy James Stewart Edward G. Robinson
Cinematography	William Clothier
Edited by	Otho Lovering
Music by	Alex North
Production company	John Ford–Bernard Smith Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	October 3, 1964 (1964-10-03)
Running time	154 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$3.5 million(US/Canada rentals)[1]

Cheyenne Autumn is a 1964 American epic Western film starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. It tells the story of a factual event, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878–79, told with artistic license. The film was the last Western directed by John Ford, who proclaimed it an elegy for the Native Americans who had been abused by the U.S. government and misrepresented in numerous of his own films. With a budget of more than $4 million, the film was relatively unsuccessful at the box office and failed to earn a profit for Warner Bros.^[2]

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 Bureau will continue to provide for the natives. Angered at the Bureau's slow response, Dull Knife withdraws the Cheyenne children from Deborah's school. Later that night, Deborah learns from the 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, the 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 to which nine soldiers, including Braden, were killed. It is then reported in the local newspapers, who 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, D.C.

Archers 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. However, Wessels intends for the Cheyenne to return to Oklahoma. Angered, Archer goes to Washington, D.C. 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 pistol 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.

John Ford long wanted to make a movie about the Cheyenne exodus. As early as 1957, he wrote a treatment with his son Patrick Ford, envisioning a small-scale drama with non-professional Indian actors. Early drafts of the script drew on Howard Fast's novel The Last Frontier. However, 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.^[3]

Reluctantly abandoning the docudrama idea, Ford 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. The studio insisted on Ford's casting Ricardo Montalbán and Gilbert Roland.^[4]

The film was photographed in Super Panavision 70 by William Clothier, whose work was nominated for an Academy Award. Gilbert Roland earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The original version was 158 minutes, Ford's longest work. Warner Bros. later decided to edit the "Dodge City" sequence out of the film, reducing the running time to 145 minutes, although it was shown in theaters during the film's initial release. This sequence features James Stewart as Wyatt Earp and Arthur Kennedy as Doc Holliday. Some critics have argued that this comic episode, mostly unrelated to the rest of an otherwise serious movie, breaks the flow of the story.^[5][6] It was later restored for the VHS and subsequent DVD releases.

Much of the film was shot in Monument Valley Tribal Park on the Arizona-Utah border, where Ford had filmed scenes for many of his earlier films, especially Stagecoach and The Searchers. Parts of the film also were shot at the San Juan River at Mexican Hat, Professor Valley, Castle Valley, the Colorado River, Fisher Canyon, and Arches in Utah.^[7] Although the principal tribal leaders were played by Ricardo Montalbán and Gilbert Roland (as well as Dolores del Río and Sal Mineo in major roles), Ford again used numerous members of the Navajo tribe in this production.

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 speakers the film was amusing 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.^[8]

According to the TCM podcast The Plot Thickens, Ford twice delayed production of the film: the first came when Ricardo Montalbán received a long-distance phone call that his eldest son had injured his neck while filling in for his youngest on his paper route. Ford and Montalbán traveled back to Los Angeles to visit his son and returned to Monument Valley the next day. Some time later, Ford paused production upon hearing news of assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

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."^[5] 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".^[5] 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."^[9] 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".^[10]

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."^[11] In a retrospective review, Richard Brody of The New Yorker cited the "rueful, elegiac grandeur of John Ford's final Western".^[12]

The September 1965 issue of MAD satirized it as "Cheyenne Awful."^[13]

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

• 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:
  • Nominated Western Film^[14]

• Nominated: Academy Award for Best Cinematography: William H. Clothier
• Nominated: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture: Gilbert Roland

Before the release of Cheyenne Autumn, a 19-minute documentary, Cheyenne Autumn Trail, was put into production. Narrated by James Stewart, the short featured clips from the feature, recounting the historical events depicted in the film, depicting memorials to Little Wolf and Dull Knife and presenting life on the reservation in 1964 for descendants of the Cheyenne who participated in the Northern Cheyenne Exodus. Cheyenne Autumn Trail is included as an extra feature on the Cheyenne Autumn DVD issued in 2006.

• List of American films of 1964

• Cheyenne Autumn at IMDb
• Cheyenne Autumn at the TCM Movie Database
• Cheyenne Autumn at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Cheyenne Autumn at Rotten Tomatoes