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.

This is a story of one radically different culture assimilating another, and of the humanity discovered and exchanged by each in the process.

The eleventh book in the Spanish Bit Saga in which French Sergeant Cartier joins an expedition down the Mississippi, but deserts below the mouth of the Missouri to travel overland in search of the People and his wife's family.

Rabbit sets off on his vision quest with the Spanish Bit, the revered "elk-dog medicine" of his 16th century Plains Indian tribe, entrusted to him by his grandfather, the great chief Heads Off, but he is ambushed and the Spanish Bit is stolen, so in addition to his personal quest, he must recover his People's special medicine.

Three centuries of white-Indian relations in America are described in seven stories. They begin with the arrival of the Spanish and the initial peaceful cooperation, trace relations with the French, deal with the outbreak of hostilities and the American invasion of the West, and end in the early 1800s with the tale of a white youth living among the Indians.

In order to establish trade with the Spanish in Santa Fe, the French turn to the People (the Indian tribe) to serve as guides for the hazardous trek.