Due to salary disputes with the producers of The Lone Ranger television series (1949-1957), star Clayton Moore walked away from the role of his lifetime and busied himself in work playing characters major and minor, virtuous and villainous, in such grade B programmers as Cyclone Fury (1951), Radar Men from the Moon (1952), and Jungle Drums of Africa (1953). Shortly before returning to the series in 1954 (his place behind the mask having been filled in the interim by actor John Hart), Moore and his Lone Ranger sidekick Jay Silverheels were cast in the Columbia Pictures Technicolor western The Black Dakotas (1954), though it was Silverheels who got the featured role while Moore was all but lost in the supporting cast. Gary Merrill is the real star of the show, as a Southern agitator attempting to whip up unrest among the Sioux tribes in a bid to pull Union troops away from the picket lines in the War Between the States, while also angling to steal a shipment in gold to fatten Confederate coffers. Brawny John Bromfield plays the white hat to Merrill's black, with Wanda Hendrix and Noah Beery, Jr., along for the ride as interested parties in this western saga that - notwithstanding a race-baiting ad campaign ("Deadly Sioux versus Desperate Settlers")- argues sympathy for the plight of Native Americans squeezed in the grip of Manifest Destiny.

By Richard Harland Smith