A Southern Indian tribe under the leadership of Heads Off is transformed into warriors when they adapt the "elkdogs"--horses--as part of their culture.

Facing danger and intrigue at every bend, the explorers in a seventeenth-century expedition down the Mississippi River take a perilous journey through the then-mysterious Louisiana Territory.

An old Indian woman rescues a child with smallpox in one of the epidemics which decimated the Indians in the 18th Century. The child is the only survivor of another tribe and Running Deer's people warn her not to touch the girl. But Running Deer has no reason for living. Since her husband died she has been planning suicide. The child recovers and Running Deer finds a new reason to live--until the girl decides she wants to be reunited with her own...

Rabbit, the grandson of Heads Off, looses the sacred Spanish Bit of his people to the Blue Paints. He seeks to recover the Spanish Bit by riding against Walks-Like-Thunder, the Blue Paints chief.