A Thunder of Drums

A reluctant cavalry Captain must track a defiant tribe of migrating Cheyenne.

After fierce war chief Ulzana and a small war party jump the reservation bent on murder and terror, an inexperienced young lieutenant is assigned to track him down.

Fidencio Borer, an apothecary in a village on the northern border of Mexico, discovers some old title of a mine in Arizona and decides to claim them. Trying to cross the border is a border guard intercepted by exaggerating in the line of duty. On the way is captured by a tribe of Apaches and is about to be burned alive, but thanks to the Great Head Horse Lying having toothache and learns that the prisoner it can heal, ordered his release on the condition that the cure. Fidencio would take the wheel and gets the eternal friendship of the Chief apache.

Travis, Arliss, and Lisbeth are captured by Apaches while Old Yeller's son, Sam, tracks their trail.

Chief of Scouts Ed Bannon works for the US Army at Fort Clark, Texas and he dreams of aiding in bringing peace to the region, despite opposition from both the Army and the Apaches.

When a handful of settlers survive an Apache attack on their wagon train they must put their lives into the hands of Comanche Todd, a white man who has lived with the Comanches most of his life and is wanted for the murder of three men.

Cardelanche, the son of an Indian chief, returns from the East to find himself rejected by his own people. He is made captain of the U.S. army when he saves a detachment of cavalry from a group of renegade Indians, and further removes himself from his race when he develops a relationship with Miriam, the daughter of the Fort Remmington commandant. Lieutenant Parkman (Walker) gets into a fight with Cardelanche when Parkman is demoted, while General Custer's troops are slaughtered by Cardelanche's people. Cardelanche decides that his true allegiance is to his own race, and gives up Miriam to return to them.

Though a fictionalized Western based on George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the film is almost a generic war story covering the enlistment, training, and operational deployment of a group of recruits that could take place in any time period.

Owen Thursday sees his new posting to the desolate Fort Apache as a chance to claim the military honour which he believes is rightfully his. Arrogant, obsessed with military form and ultimately self-destructive, he attempts to destroy the Apache chief Cochise after luring him across the border from Mexico, against the advice of his subordinates.

The Apache Indians have reluctantly agreed to settle on a US Government approved reservation. Not all the Apaches are able to adapt to the life of corn farmers. One in particular, Geronimo, is restless. Pushed over the edge by broken promises and necessary actions by the government, Geronimo and thirty or so other warriors form an attack team which humiliates the government by evading capture, while reclaiming what is rightfully theirs.

The Apaches are on the warpath and the Army must defend them. Murphy's mission is to get a shipment of rifles, but it's stolen by greedy white traders with the help of mutinous soldiers

Major Jim Colton is a sympathetic leader who has a working relationship with Apache leader Cochise. Colton is undermined by corrupt and politically ambitious Indian agent Neil Baylor who sets up a false attack, and the abduction of a local farmer's son. While Colton is away investigating the matter, Baylor convinces Lieutenant Bascom that Cochise's band is to blame, and incites him to lead an expedition against the Apache band to return the boy.