Watching In The Footsteps Of Crazy Horse in 2026
In The Footsteps Of Crazy Horse is a 1955 Western directed by George Sherman, starring Joel McCrea. It's not the most famous Western of that era, but it does something most of its peers don't bother with: it treats its Indigenous characters with more complexity than the usual caricature. I watched it recently on a Criterion Blu-ray I picked up at a thrift store for six dollars, and it held up better than I expected. The story follows a U.S. Army captain (McCrea) who is ordered to track down Crazy Horse's remaining followers after the Lakota leader's death. Instead of just shooting everything in sight, the captain tries to negotiate and understand what's happening. It's got some messy third-act problems, but the middle section where he actually engages with the Oglala elders is genuinely interesting. The film is based on Mari Sandoz's novel, which was itself controversial when it came out because it didn't paint Native Americans as simple villains or noble savages. That tension between the book's intent and the studio's desire for a straightforward action picture shows up clearly in the final cut.
Where To Watch It
The film has cycled through streaming platforms multiple times. Right now it's available on The Criterion Channel, which is where I watched it. You can also occasionally find it on Amazon Prime for rent, usually around $3.99. It pops up on Tubi free with ads if you're patient enough to wait for the right rotation. The Blu-ray from Criterion is the definitive version. It was restored from the original camera negative and includes a decent supplemental essay. I'd skip the older DVD pressings — they're compressed and look muddy by comparison. The color grading on the Blu-ray is also more accurate to what the Technicolor cinematography was supposed to look like.
What Most People Miss About This One
Here's something nobody talks about with this film: the casting of Chief John Big Tree as one of the Oglala advisors is significant. He was a real Cherokee actor who appeared in dozens of Westerns, and here he's given lines that actually convey political strategy rather than mystical wisdom. It's a small thing, but in a genre where Native characters rarely say anything that isn't either a prophecy or a war cry, it's notable. Also worth noting is the location work. Much of the film was shot in Idaho and Utah, which stands in reasonably well for the Black Hills region. The landscape shots aren't glamorous, but they're not the generic Monument Valley setup either, which gives it a slightly different visual texture than the John Ford pictures. I ran into a problem once trying to sync the Criterion Blu-ray with subtitles on my older receiver — the audio track had a slight desync in the second act that drove me nuts. Turns out it was a known issue with that particular release batch. The workaround was updating my receiver's firmware, which fixed it in about ten minutes. If you're experiencing the same thing, that's probably the fix.
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The Limitations
It's not a perfect film. The pacing drags in the first act, and the ending wraps up too neatly for what the story has been building toward. Joel McCrea is competent but not particularly memorable here — he's giving a steady, workmanlike performance that never quite catches fire. Some of the dialogue feels like it was rewritten by committee, with the more nuanced moments from the novel getting smoothed over into something safer. If you're looking for a deeper understanding of Crazy Horse and the Lakota resistance, you'd do better to read Mari Sandoz's novel or go straight to the primary sources like John G. Neihardt's "Black Elk Speaks." The film is a decent entry point, but it's filtered through 1950s studio constraints and doesn't have the time or budget to go further. For a similar vibe with better filmmaking, try "Soldier Blue" even though it takes more liberties historically. Or if you want something closer to the actual events, "Ride With The Devil" handles the same period conflict with more honesty, even though it's set in a different theater of the same war.
Just watch In The Footsteps Of Crazy Horse if you're curious. It's worth seeing once, preferably on the Criterion disc, and then you can decide whether the source material is worth digging into next.
