the idea of a woman giving up her child spoiler

That theme was prevalent in many older movies, especially where the mother was of a lower class, such as being an actress, than the father, and the child was his "son and heir." It was seen as the ultimate in mother love, that she cared more for her child's success than her own happiness. Woman to Woman (1929) ended similarly with the sacrificial death of the birth mother.

In early films, the more you sacrificed, the deeper was your love. That was also the case in this movie with Jim's sacrifice which was to show true nobility of spirit, in violent contrast to his no good cousin. The glaring flaw in Jim's nobility was sending his son away without the child's mother's consent. He could sacrifice for himself but he was just victimizing her. The last words weren't particularly broken-hearted or accepting of responsibility, either. One got the feeling that he was with her because, as we were told earlier, he was lonely. At the end of the movie my impression was that he was an upper class twit who couldn't make his ranch a paying concern, did nothing to help his wife with her dire, possibly lethal legal problems, and was useless when it came to emotional understanding. He was probably sent to boarding school at a young age and was warped because of it. At least his thieving cousin had the grace to fall off a mountain, write a confession, and die. That's more than Jim did!

I'm also reminded of Sacagawea who was persuaded to let William Clark put her son into boarding school and give him all the white so-called advantages in life. He was a big hit with the Duke of Wurttemburg and fathered a child in Wurttemburg with a local woman. There is controversy over whether Sacagawea died young or went on to a rich full life elsewhere.

This seemed to me to be a movie about the British class system as much as about British racism. Brits were wildly infatuated with Native Americans and the romance of the west and cowboys. Over the years any Native American who got to Britain, and to many parts of Europe, was treated as a celebrity. I can't quite see the rationale of accepting a Native American-British child as an equal, to be educated as "a gentleman," and not the child's mother unless it was a case of her being "not our class." They were obviously upper class and that would mean they had a small circle in which they could marry.

On Who Do You Think You Are? in Britain, there was a story of a man who tried to buck the system. He was in the colonial service where he had a wife and family. He became ill and was sent home. He tried to get back but his health was too fragile. He kept sending money to them but he wasn't wealthy and couldn't travel that far. He eventually married a British woman of his own class and had some kids with her but he longed for his other wife and family. They loved him, and their extended family still live in the community he set up. Many Brits had a colonial wife (usually without a legally binding marriage agreement although the wife might have been led to believe it was) and a "real" wife. He fought that for years but was forced to accept he was never going to see them again. It was a ruthless system for everyone involved. I'm sure people told him, "Listen, you just have to face facts."