In the 1840s, trappers with government backing push the Yellow Hands Sioux off their sacred land; they retreat into an apocalyptic spirituality, passively waiting for supernatural wrath to descend on their usurpers. Meanwhile, in England, Lord John Morgan feels his spirit weaken, so he returns to America to live again with the Yellow Hand. Finding them dispirited, he invigorates them as well as himself through self-imposed torture and other rituals. Once he convinces the clan to take direct action, Horse must devise a strategy to take the trappers' fort. The clan's women and boys take on special assignments to aid the assault to regain the sacred land.

Based on the real events of The Donner Party tragedy. The Donner Party was a group of California-bound American settlers caught up in the western expansion of the 1840s. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-1847, a number of the trapped settlers joined together in a final effort to reach California and organize a rescue party.

Clipper ships taking the shortest route between the Mississippi and the Atlantic often end up on the shoals of Key West in the 1840s...