This adaptation of the epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow tells the tale of a mighty Ojibwe leader as he falls in love and strives for peace.

Officers Leaphorn and Chee search for a missing anthropologist suspected of stealing artifacts from a burial site.

Faced with the murder of three medicine men, Navajo police must find the culprit. That the murders appear to be the work of a Skinwalker, or bad medicine man, complicate and illuminate the detective's work.

Mad with grief after the death of his Kiowa wife, Roe awaits death under a tree with her body beside him. She begins to haunt him because he won't bury her. His father, who bought him the wife, thinks her sister might reason with Roe.