Sioux leader Chief Gray Otter sends his son Tiah to the white man's school so that he can become a great leader. The son returns home drunk, disappointing his father. Things get worse when the son joins a group of renegades and robs a payroll wagon. The father, observing the clash from a distance, takes a side.
A silent melodrama from the very first series of American films to use a Japanese cast. The scenes of the story are laid in Japan during the last revolution in the late '60's.
In Snake River, Buck Farley breaks up a fight staged by crooked Chicago Saloon owner Johnson, who set-up alcoholic Jake Frazer as the town's sheriff as a joke. Johnson pretends to have saved Buck's life (when in reality he was planning on shooting him), which indentures Buck to Johnson, and Buck becoming his deputy. Buck also starts to have feelings for Jake's daughter, Emma, who has also rebuffed the advances of Johnson. Johnson uses a ruse to get Buck searching for some allegedly stolen horses in the desert, but Buck forces Johnson to accompany him (after he realizes that Johnson is not on the up and up, and also has designs on Emma)...
Donna Gonzales has a daughter, Rosa, and a son, Maxim. Maxim is fighting in the Rebel cause, his mother being the widow of a Rebel general. He is pursued while taking important dispatches to the Rebel general, takes refuge in his home, hides himself in a chimney and eludes the Federals. Maxim is badly wounded, and his sister, Rosa, volunteers to carry the dispatches. She departs dressed in her brother's clothes and is captured.
Jim Cameron becomes desperate at his failure to get work, and resolves to hold up the stage in order to provide necessities for his wife and sick child, Mildred.
Gordon Elliott, a student at one of the big universities, is unable to make the football team until his senior year. He is then awarded a position at center because of his superior method of passing the ball, though his lightness is against him. He overhears the head coach say that Dick Blackwood would make a better center if only he could master the pass. In his loyalty to the college Elliott teaches Blackwood the pass, thereby eliminating himself, not merely from the team, but also, as he supposes, from the possibility of winning Marjorie Burgess, who has commanded him to return for his answer after he has played his first big game.
Ben Anderson, factor of the trading station, impatient with his daughter Anne's coquetries, calls all the trappers to him and promises to wed her to the one who brings back the most valuable catch of furs in the spring. Anne fancies herself in love with Henri Levesnue, a Frenchman. So when he is reported to have brought in the biggest prize she is delighted. But the following day, Joe Eagle, a quarter-breed, reaches the station with twice Henri's catch, Ben insists that Anne marry Joe, but she swears she never could become the wife of the French Indian, and because he really loves her, Joe, who has overheard her protestations, hides half his furs under his cabin floor. Anne is married to Henri, but in a few months is very unhappy. He is a heavy drinker; he neglects her, and at last, being penniless, he steals a bale of furs from the station. The factor sets Joe to catch the thief.
Pete Larson is a brute whose battered wife, Anne, finally finds courage to leave. The woman gets lost in the wilderness and is taken in by a young hunter, who later proposes marriage. Mistakenly believing her husband to be dead, Anne accepts only to find her first husband returning to perform a bit of blackmail.
