The year is 1774. The place is that wilderness white people call northern Vermont, along the shores Lake Champlain. The turmoil of the impending American Revolution menaces the Elnu Abenaki — a tribe traditionally allied with the French. As the story begins, one family-sized village are massacred as potential enemies by British scouts. The lone survivor of this attack is a young chief who was away on a trading mission. This man’s name is Whlogwilas — “Night Owl”. His wife and small daughter die in his arms. A handmade doll is all he has left of either of them. Elsewhere in the forest, a European orphan named Marta wanders, defenseless, after the sudden death of her brutal stepfather. This man — whose Puritanical fire-sermon opens the film — heaps so much venom on all around him, especially young Marta, that it is no surprise when a native tribesman takes revenge by killing him, and makes an expressive display of the dead body. Shortly the white orphan and the Abenaki brave cross paths in the forest. Their relations are initially hostile. He takes her captive. Despite her fear, Marta is able to see the human being in this fierce man: he has a sweet dog; he sees to it that Marta is fed, and her wounds bandaged. Despite his rage at whites, Whlogwilas is likewise able (aided by ghostly visions of his late wife), to master his outrage and see a oneness with his lost daughter in Marta. What follows surprises them both.