James R. Webb's screenplay, Ford's direction and the splendid acting of the cast make this an impressive film.

A sort of frontier Exodus that's filmed with a majestic passion for the wild lands and for its indigenous dwellers.

Somewhere in the telling, the original premise of the Mari Sandoz novel is lost sight of in a wholesale insertion of extraneous incidents which bear little or no relation to the subject.

A melancholy epic which [John Ford] seems to have directed under the misapprehension that it was an action comedy.