How true is this story?

The true part of this story is not the cast of characters in this film, but the greater late-1870s context of the forcible relocation of the Cheyenne and other northern tribes from their homelands near the Black Hills to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma as punishment for their part in the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 and wiping out of General George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry. Then, after the story presented in this film, the saga of CHEYENNE AUTUMN (WB,1964) unfolded in 1878 and 1879 with the Cheyenne nation making a forced trek of their own back to their own native lands, while being pursued by the Cavalry bluecoats soldiers hot on their heels all the way to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, where they were forcibly imprisoned in a frigid cold warehouse by the Commander of the fort Wessels. Cheyenne war chief Dull Knife led a group of Cheyenne who broke out in the freezing cold in January 1879, but was soon captured and killed afterward. In the early 1880s, the Cheyenne were peaceably awarded their own tribal reservation in Montana (not as good as their own beloved Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota lands, but a lot better than the dustbowl of Oklahoma!).

Dejael

It is nice to see this question being asked. Of course there were marriages between Euro-Americans and Tsitsitas (Cheyenne). One example is the owner of Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River in what is now Colorado. Descendants from this family are among the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma. Another example is the Rowland family on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. But the entirely fictional story in this film, while of laudable sentiment, has many elements that are incorrect. The story does not show Cheyenne cultural ways accurately at all. In regards to relocation, while the Northern Cheyenne bands had preferred to stay north of the Platte River and allied with the Ogallala bands of Lakota (Sioux), the southern bands had allied with Kiowa and Commanche and accepted an agency in Indian Territory. The forced removal of the northern bands to Indian Territory was part of federal policy as designed by Interior Secretary Carl Schurtz, who wanted to centralize administration of the indigenous tribes without thought to the variety among indigenous peoples. That this took place in the late 1870's has more to do with the ending of military occupation of the former confederate states, which allowed General Sherman to free up troops for subjugation of the northern plains tribes. Fortunately, General Nelson Miles was a strong advocate for keeping the Northern Cheyenne bands in the north. He accomplished this by hiring the men as scouts, and testifying several times in the U.S. Senate urging a reservation for them in the Tongue River area. In an era when the U.S. government insisted on turning the hunter-gatherers into bib-overalled farmers, becoming scouts in the army was the only way for the Cheyennes to cling to a warrior lifestyle, and was, in my opinion, a good tribal strategy in the long run.

I believe that there is some truth to this tale. I remember reading a book about the Western Frontier many years ago which included the story of the two Cheyenne warriors taking on the U.S. Cavalry in the manner depicted in this fine movie. I cannot comment with any certainty about the Romantic element,however:But the bravado shown by these warriors has lingered in my memory.