As a lifelong Western fan I have decided this is the best Western about the Indian Wars ever made.

Of all the thousands of "Cowboy and Indian" Western movies I have ever seen, this one strikes me as most true to history. Other Westerns are usually one-sided. In the old ones, the Whites are virtuous bringers of civilization, facing the violent evil Indians, and in the newer ones, the Native Americans are the noble victims of brutal White oppression.

Ulzana's raid shows that the fighting men of both sides were equally violent, amoral, and brutal. The only truly virtuous people on the Western Frontier were the innocent non-combatants just trying to survive, both Red and White, who got caught up in the conflict.

A White homesteader family that got wiped out in a dawn raid by Apaches were no more deserving of that fate than a Native family who was cut down in a Cavalry massacre and vice versa. Only the warriors on both sides were to blame, and even they, Native and European, were both fighting to protect their people and way of life. The Europeans moved onto the lands of the Apache and the Sioux and drove them out, but those tribes had driven off other tribes before them.

I try to imagine other "Cowboy and Indian" Westerns coexisting in the same cinematic reality as Ulzana's Raid, even supposed realistic movies like Dances With Wolves or Geronimo,an American Legend. It never works. No other movie accurately presents the grim, hyper-realistic reality of the grey, relative morality of the Settler/Native conflict. All the other "Cowboys and Indians" Westerns are glossy Hollywood good-guy-bad-guy fantasies next to Ulzana's Raid. Aldrich created a masterpiece that is like a window into bloody Arizona of the 1880s.