"Jack Crabb was either the most neglected hero in history or a liar of insane proportion!" At least the marketing got an accurate bead on this 31-year-old picaresque tale of the life of a 121-year-old veteran of the American West -- and of Custer's Last Stand. The film opens with Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman, fresh from The Graduate) browbeating an interviewer (William Hickey) who is looking into the lives of Plains Indians. It ends with Crabb dismissing the overwhelmed and apologetic historian -- he looked about as exhausted at the film's end as Richard Frank, the priest to whom Salieri tells his story, did at the end of Amadeus) -- as he finishes narrating less than a quarter of his life.

There really was a Little Big Man but he was little like the character in the film. The real Little Big Man was an Oglala Lakota, a fearless and respected warrior who fought alongside Crazy Horse against Bear Coat Miles. He opposed the treaty and the commission that wanted to take the Black Hills from the Sioux. He was later made into an agency policeman by the white man.

And what a life! The Pawnee Indians attack his family's wagon train and leave Crabb an orphan at age 10. He is adopted by the Cheyenne tribe and the chief of the "human beings," Old Lodge Skins (the late Chief Dan George, a Best Supporting Actor nominee), who he calls "grandfather." He saves the life of Younger Bear (Cal Bellini) in a raid on the Pawnee and earns the name, Little Big Man. He is re-adopted by a plains preacher and his libidinous wife, Louise Pendrake (the ever-so-belle-ish Faye Dunaway). At the end of his "religion period" he is employed by Allardyce T. Merriweather (the late, great Martin Balsam), a hawker of patent medicines. When the towspeople tar and feather them, he re-discovers his sister, Caroline (Carole Androsky) and begins a brief career as a gunfighter known as the "Soda Pop Kid." During this time he makes the acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey, who has been Jack Nicholson's acting coach), but discovers he doesn't have the stomach to actually shoot people.

He marries Olga (Kelly Jean Peters), a Swedish woman who never learned English well, and opens a store with a crook. When the store closes, Jack Crabb and his wife, take the advice of General George Armstrong Custer (the comic genius of the late Richard Mulligan) and go west. On the way, Olga is carried off by Indians, which forces Crabb to search throughout the plains, and join Custer's army as a muleskinner. Forced to participate in a raid on an Indian camp, Crabb deserts and discovers the daughter of one of his Cheyenne mentors, Sunshine (played with brilliant silliness by Amy Eccles) giving birth in the woods across the river. Her husband and father killed in the raid, Crabb decides to trade her for his wife, but ends up marrying her and rejoining the Cheyenne when his wife cannot be found.

A year later, as his own child by Sunshine is about to be born, Little Big Man discovers that Olga has become the shrewish wife of his rival, Younger Bear, and she sure had learned to speak Cheyenne! This is the occasion for two of the best exchanges in the film. While searching for Olga, Old Lodge Skins says he had a dream that Little Big Man would return to the tribe.

Old Lodge SkinsDon't worry my son, you will be back with us, I dreamed it last night. I saw you with your wives.

Little Big ManWives, Grandfather?

Old Lodge SkinsYes, there were three... or four, it was hard to tell. It was very dark in your teepee and they were under buffalo rugs as you crawled among them. But it was a great copulation!