Flapping Eagle lives on an Indian reservation in the
southwestern United States. He drinks too much, one of many sources of disagreement between Flap and his sweetheart, Dorothy Bluebell. He also has on-going trouble with Sgt. Rafferty, a police officer in the city, who is brutal and seemingly bigoted (although criticized late in the story by Flap for being, as Flap puts it, only "
half Indian"). Flap supports himself by making deliveries with an old pickup and help from his buddies. Spillage of a box of "Indian dolls" intended for sale as tourist souvenirs results in a ticket from Rafferty leading to the introduction of Flap's lawyer, Wounded Bear Mr. Smith. Rather than law books, Wounded Bear's office is filled with ridiculous stacks of parchments, eventually shown to represent the many
treaty promises made to the tribe. Such treaties inform Wounded Bear's
counsel to Flap in the incidents that follow. Flap stumbles into activism, first disrupting a construction crew blasting and building a highway through Indian land (
Interstate 25 was being completed through the location's pueblos at that time) and accidentally destroying the crew's brand new
front loader, then stealing a train after Wounded Bear leads him to believe the train would become legal Indian property once it is "abandoned" in their territory. Rafferty is violently beaten by Flap after a series of insults and abuses and the last straw, the shooting of a dog belonging to a poor, pitifully lonely, old Indian. Now a fugitive-cum-Indian activist whose protests have gained him publicity and popularity, again under counsel of a treaty that in this case suggests that unwarranted police action against him has
reverted the city back to the tribe, Flap leads a march into the city to establish their claim. From a hospital window, Rafferty aims a handgun and assassinates him. ==Cast==