Set in
New France in 1634 (during the period of conflicts known as the
Beaver Wars), the film begins in the settlement that will one day become
Quebec City.
Jesuit missionaries are trying to encourage the local
Algonquin people to embrace Christianity but have thus far had only limited results.
Samuel de Champlain, the founder of the settlement, sends Father LaForgue, a young
Jesuit priest, to join a
Catholic mission in a distant
Huron village. With winter approaching, the journey will be difficult and cover as much as 2,400 kilometres. LaForgue is accompanied on his journey by a non-Jesuit assistant, Daniel, and a group of
Algonquin Indians, whom Champlain has charged with guiding him to the Huron village. This group includes Chomina, an older experienced traveller who has clairvoyant dreams; his wife; and Annuka, their daughter. As they journey across the lakes and forests, Daniel and Annuka fall in love to the discomfort of the celibate LaForgue. The group meets with a band of
Montagnais,
First Nations people who have never seen Frenchmen before. The Montagnais
shaman, Mestigoit, is suspicious (and implicitly jealous) of LaForgue's influence over the Algonquins and accuses LaForgue of being a demon. He encourages Chomina and the other Algonquins to abandon the two Frenchmen and travel instead to a winter hunting lodge. They do so and paddle away from the Frenchmen. LaForgue accepts his fate, but Daniel is determined to stay with Annuka and so follows the Indians as they march across the forest. When one Indian tries to shoot Daniel, Chomina is consumed by guilt at having betrayed Champlain's trust. He and a few other members of the Algonquin tribe return with Daniel to try to find LaForgue. As they recover LaForgue, a party of
Mohawk Iroquois attack them, killing most of the Algonquins, including Chomina's wife, and take the rest captive. The prisoners are taken to an Iroquois fortress, where they are forced to
run the gauntlet and to watch Chomina's young son be killed. They are told they will be slowly tortured to death the next day. That night, Annuka seduces their guard and allows him to engage in coitus with her. When that distracts him, she strikes him with a caribou hoof, renders him unconscious, and allows them to escape. Chomina, dying of a wound from his capture, sees a small grove of which he has dreamed many times before, and realizes that it is the place in which he is destined to die. LaForgue tries unsuccessfully to persuade Chomina to embrace Christ before he dies. As Chomina freezes to death in the snow, he sees the
She-Manitou appearing to him. As the weather grows colder, Annuka and Daniel take LaForgue to the outskirts of the Huron settlement but leave him to enter it alone, as Chomina had dreamed must happen. LaForgue finds all but one of the French inhabitants dead since they were murdered by the Hurons, who blamed them for a
smallpox epidemic. The leader of the last survivors tells LaForgue that the Hurons are dying and that LaForgue should offer to save them by
baptizing them. LaForgue confronts the Hurons. When their leader asks LaForgue if he loves them, LaForgue thinks of the faces of all of the Indians he has met on his journey and answers "Yes." The leader then asks him to baptize the Hurons, and LaForgue obeys. The film ends with a golden sunrise. An intertitle states that 15 years later, the Hurons, having accepted Christianity, were routed and killed by their enemies the Iroquois; the Jesuit mission to the Hurons was abandoned; and the Jesuits returned to Quebec. ==Cast==