After an unsuccessful May 1950 press preview, MGM shelved the film. The grim movie was superbly made, but its uncompromising, downbeat story seemed to spell box-office disaster. After the release of the more mainstream Broken Arrow (1950) the following fall, it did get some bottom-of-the-bill bookings in neighborhood grindhouses but did little business and has remained little seen.
The film has some basis in history. An 1851 treaty at Fort Laramie had set aside lands for the tribes. But as settlers encroached upon the lands, tensions increased. In 1864 settlers blazed the Bozeman Trail through tribal lands along the Powder River. Violence erupted in 1865, and in 1866 the first major encounter between the U.S. military and the tribes occurred in what is known as Red Cloud's War. A second treaty was reached at Fort Laramie in 1868 that closed the Powder River Country to whites. But soon miners in the Black Hills violated the treaty, which led to what came to be known as the Black Hills War in 1876. Fighting in Wyoming during the Black Hills War was mostly along the border with Montana.
Actress Paula Raymond did not get along with Director Anthony Mann who allegedly tried to seduce her. However, the two must have resolved their differences as they worked with each other again a year later on The Tall Target (1951).
Robert Taylor was widely considered to be miscast as a Native American Indian.
The character Orrie Masters is a lawyer and she says her father was a lawyer. In real life the actress playing this part, Paula Raymond, once studied law in San Francisco and her father was a distinguished attorney.