This is a well-intentioned attempt from early in the second series of "Bonanza" to sell the idea of Amerindian equality to the mass TV audience, decades after pioneering Hollywood movies did it a lot better. The Cartrights tend to get their liberalism somewhat half-assed here. Matsou, a younger Bannock chief (Ricardo Montalban), and his wife Atoya (Madlyn Rhue), a Shoshone, are outcast from both tribes and live on their own in the rocky high country of the Ponderosa. When they save Ben from Matsou's older brother Lagos (Anthony Caruso) and nurse him back to strength, he offers them his best farm land so they can raise crops and stock and live as white people. Matsou is skeptical and reluctant but, urged on by his wife's Christian pleadings that it's the best hope for their people, he tries. A rabid Indian-hating settler, Ike Daggett (Karl Swenson), another homesteader adjacent who has been gifted land by the Cartrights, does all he can to destroy this initiative. In a confrontation at Daggett's wife's funeral, he grabs a rifle while Ben restrains Matsou and shoots pregnant Atoya dead: "An eye for an eye!" he cries in good Christian spirit. Matsou takes revenge on Daggett but cannot go through with it on Ben. He returns to his people, promising to return in friendship. (As if he hasn't learnt by now!) Montalban was a fine figure of a man at 40, before back problems set in. And Madlyn Rhue too was a dish.
Review of Day of Reckoning
