Daniel, Mingo and Jeremiah are on a trapping expedition and encounter coal miner-settler Joseph Garth (R. G. Armstrong). Garth has a successful family-run mining operation underway, but its on the land of the increasingly-unhapy Tuscarora tribe.
A welcome return to actual Western action after the previous week's pointless diversion. Dan shows up for the episode's entirety, which improves things from the start. Veteran character actor Armstrong is sufficiently villainous as a prototypical Southern religious-fanatic-racist-capitalist; he keeps his family's dining chairs hung on the wall to prevent idleness, and tries to enslave the Tuscarora. Jimmy Dean continues his gradual move into the series for a second outing as Jeremiah.
A strong attempt is made to depict the settler and tribal perspectives on frontier economic development, and the juxtaposition of the dynamics of and between Garth's family and the tribe are woven into a decently engaging story.
But historically, the hour goes off the mine cart rails early. (A mid-19th century mine cart is actually shown as being present in 1780's Kentucky.) Garth is ostensibly mining coal for the "Portsmouth foundries." Although many iron foundries were operating along the Eastern Seaboard by the time of the Revolution, they used charcoal, and commercial coal mining did not start in Kentucky until 1820. As mentioned in previous reviews, the Tuscarora had largely been forced out of North Carolina to New York through settler pressure by the Revolution. A middling attempt is made here to show them
as an Appalachian tribe, but again Great Plains regalia slips in regardless. Dan makes reference to "Fort Sims," but if not a corruption of War of 1812-era Ft. Mims, Alabama, he might have discovered a time tunnel - there is a Fort James C. Sims, Ala., but its a single office building in Huntsville.
More notably, the pseudo-historical notion of organized settler biological warfare against the tribes is trotted out when Garth sends the Tuscarora a gift of narcotic-laced honey. This one should not be trotted out even in a fictional setting, as it takes on the undeserved status of contemporary political flashpoint. There is only one documented case of consideration, that of the British Gen. Jeffrey Amherst talking about use of smallpox-laced blankets during Pontiac's War in the 1760's. There is no documentation the plan as British policy was ever put in effect (a local commander on his own made a likely abortive attempt earlier at Fort Pitt), deliberate transmission through textiles was notoriously unreliable, and natural transmission in a pre-vaccination era was devastating enough to the tribes.
The hour also features a well-choreographed fight in a mineshaft, on top of an offering of engaging subplots; the DB formula script returns in fine form here.