Storyline Broken Arrow 1950
Tom Jeffords (James Stewart) comes across a wounded,
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 decide to let Jeffords go free. However, a group of gold
prospectors and the Apache gag Jeffords and tie him to a tree. Helpless, he
watches as they 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. He corrects a man's exaggerated account of the attack,
but Ben Slade (Will Geer) is incredulous and doesn't see why Jeffords didn't
kill the Apache boy. Instead, Jeffords learns the Apache language and customs
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. Jeffords enters the
Apache stronghold and begins a parley with Cochise (Jeff Chandler) who agrees
to let the couriers through. Tom meets a young Apache girl, Sonseeahray (Debra
Paget), and falls in love.
The Apaches allow the mail riders to travel to Tucson.
However, a few of Cochise's warriors attack an army wagon train and kill the
survivors. The townsfolk nearly lynch Jeffords as a traitor before he is saved
by General Oliver Otis Howard (Basil Ruysdael), who recruits Jeffords to
negotiate peace with Cochise. Howard (the "Christian General")
condemns racism, saying that the Bible "says nothing about pigmentation of
the skin."
Jeffords makes a peace treaty with Cochise, but a group led
by Geronimo (Jay Silverheels) oppose the treaty and leave the stronghold.
Jeffords accompanies the first Butterfield stagecoach to leave Tucson during
the three months set aside by Cochise. Apache renegades ambush the coach as it
stops at a river. Jeffords rides off to seek help from Cochise and the
stagecoach is saved.
Jeffords and Sonseeahray marry in an Apache ceremony and
have several days of tranquility. Later, Ben Slade's son spins a story to
Jeffords and Cochise about two of his horses stolen by Cochise's people. Cochise
says that his people did not take them and doubts his story, as he knows the
boy's father is an Apache hater. They then decide to go along with the boy up
the canyon but are ambushed by the boy's father and a gang of men from Tucson.
Jeffords is badly wounded and Sonseeahray is killed but Cochise kills most of
the men, including Ben Slade. Cochise forbids Jeffords to retaliate, saying
that the ambush was not done by the military and that Geronimo broke the peace
no less than Slade and his men and that peace must be maintained. Jeffords
rides off with the belief 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 and in the mountains, I always remembered, my wife was with me".
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Director: Delmer Daves
Writers: Elliott Arnold (novel), Albert Maltz (screenplay)
Stars: James Stewart, Jeff Chandler, Debra Paget
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