Dances With Wolves

Dances With Wolves, American epic western film, released in 1990, that was directed by and starred Kevin Costner and won widespread admiration as well as seven Academy Awards, including that for best picture. It also received the Golden Globe Award for best drama.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

After an apparently heroic act during a Civil War battle in Tennessee, Union army Lieutenant John Dunbar (played by Costner) is offered his choice of posting, and he requests to be sent to the western frontier. He is transferred first to Fort Hays in Kansas, where the unhinged Major Fambrough (Maury Chaykin) assigns him to the army’s most distant outpost, Fort Sedgewick. When Dunbar arrives at the post, he is surprised to find it deserted and in disrepair, but he chooses to stay nonetheless. He sets about restoring the fort, and he keeps a journal of his experiences and activities. A wolf with two white feet begins frequenting the post, and Dunbar, dubbing the wolf Two Socks, attempts to tame it.

Britannica Quiz

Best Picture Movie Quote Quiz

One day Dunbar returns from bathing in the river to find a Sioux man, Kicking Bird (Graham Greene), trying to steal his horse. Dunbar chases Kicking Bird away. Later, the Sioux warrior Wind In His Hair (Rodney A. Grant) leads a group to try again to steal the horse. Dunbar then decides to visit the Sioux village. On his way he comes across a white woman in Sioux clothing who is bleeding badly, and he brings her to the Sioux. The Indians are wary of Dunbar, but Kicking Bird persuades them not to attack him. The village chief, Ten Bears (Floyd Red Crow Westerman), enjoins Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair to learn more about Dunbar, and a series of increasingly friendly visits and gift exchanges ensue. Eventually the white woman, Stands With A Fist (Mary McDonnell), who was rescued and adopted as a small child by Kicking Bird after her family was killed in a Pawnee raid, begins to act as a translator.

When Dunbar is awakened one day by a buffalo stampede, he notifies the Sioux and joins them in a successful buffalo hunt, and he celebrates with them afterward. Dunbar is later offered a home with the Sioux, and he is given the name Dances With Wolves. Over time, he and Stands With A Fist begin to fall in love. When a Pawnee war party attacks the Sioux encampment, Dunbar provides the Sioux with firearms from the fort and helps them fight off the Pawnee. Afterward, Dunbar and Stands With A Fist are married.

Dunbar tells Kicking Bird that they will soon be overrun by white men, and Ten Bears decides that it would be best for the Sioux to move to their winter camp. Dunbar realizes that his journal, if found, would reveal the location of the Sioux village, and he returns to Fort Sedgewick to retrieve it. He finds the fort now occupied by U.S. soldiers, who quickly take him prisoner. He is treated as a deserter and beaten, and it is decided that he should be taken to Fort Hays and hanged. However, Wind In His Hair leads a war party against the military convoy transporting Dunbar and rescues him. When they reach the Sioux winter camp, Dunbar tells them that the military will continue to search for him and that he can keep the Sioux safe only by leaving. He and Stands With A Fist ride away, and Wind In His Hair calls out that he will always be a friend of Dances With Wolves.

The three-hour-long film was beautifully photographed in South Dakota. Dances With Wolves was noted for incorporating the advisory assistance of Native Americans and for the use of the Lakota language (subtitled in English) for much of the dialogue. Lakota instructor Doris Leader Charge provided Lakota translations for the movie and coached the actors in speaking the language. The movie began as a script idea by Michael Blake, who later turned it into a novel at Costner’s suggestion and adapted the screenplay from his novel. Dances With Wolves was selected in 2007 for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

Production notes and credits

• Studios: Tig Productions, Majestic Films International, and Allied Filmmakers
• Director: Kevin Costner
• Music: John Barry
• Cinematographer: Dean Semler

Cast

• Kevin Costner (Lieutenant John Dunbar/Dances With Wolves)
• Mary McDonnell (Stands With A Fist)
• Graham Greene (Kicking Bird)
• Rodney A. Grant (Wind In His Hair)
• Floyd Red Crow Westerman (Ten Bears)

Academy Award nominations (* denotes win)

• Picture*
• Lead actor (Kevin Costner)
• Supporting actor (Graham Greene)
• Supporting actress (Mary McDonnell)
• Cinematography*
• Costume design
• Direction*
• Editing*
• Music*
• Sound*
• Writing (screenplay)*