[S1E1] Buffalo '07
Growling Bear (Gordon Tootoosis), an elderly Lakota medicine man, has an apocalyptic vision that the buffalo his people rely upon will soon vanish from the prairie and the Lakota will live in square houses. His vision is controversial and his apprentice, Soaring Eagle (Gerald Auger), convinces most of the people to disregard Growling Bear's dark vision. A young boy named White Feather (Chevez Ezaneh) overhears and seeks out the now discredited Growling Bear to learn more about his vision. Before he dies, Growling Bear gives White Feather a necklace symbolizing the Lakota medicine wheel. This necklace is passed on to various characters through the miniseries.
[S1E1] Buffalo '07
Later, during a buffalo jump hunt led by White Feather's older brothers Running Fox (Matthew Strongeagle) and Dog Star (Pony Boy Osuniga), many people from the village are killed during the stampede, but White Feather is miraculously spared when the spirit of deceased Growling Bear appears to protect him. The tribe renames him Loved by the Buffalo and begin to regard him as a holy man healing people by taking their pain upon himself. This causes Soaring Eagle to become jealous and he tries to undermine Loved by the Buffalo (Simon Baker) by blaming him for an outbreak of pox and then leaving him for dead. Growling Bear appears to Loved by the Buffalo again, teaching him a song to cure the outbreak.
Robert Wheeler is operating a general store in Hillsgate, Dakota Territory, while Clara spends her spare time teaching the town's children. Their store prospers as a result of the Black Hills Gold Rush and the many who rush into the area to find gold. In October 1874, Robert agrees to take a prospector into the Black Hills for $10, but they are attacked by two bushwhackers and the prospector is killed. Robert kills the two bushwhackers in turn with his Sharps Buffalo Rifle. Though he is safely home, Clara is angry with Robert for risking his life to make money. Clara buys a typewriter from a traveling salesman. Robert invests the profits from the store in about 100 Buffalo hides for $3 each, expecting to make a profit from the craze for buffalo bedspreads and overcoats, but finds that fashions have moved on and he cannot sell them to Douglas Hillman (Judge Reinhold) for more than $1 each. Instead, he gives them to the needy Indians at a nearby reservation. While there, he meets Captain Richard Henry Pratt (Keith Carradine), who commends his actions.
A triumph of the human spirit, the transcontinental railroad opens a new era in the West, carrying homesteaders onto the prairies, bringing cowboys up the cattle trail from Texas, helping give women the vote in Utah and sending buffalo hunters onto the plains, where they drive a symbol of the West -- and a way of life -- to the brink of extinction. 041b061a72