Thomas Ince, a pioneering producer who left his mark on every film he made, established his initial reputation as a director of westerns, using California landscapes and authentic cowboys and Indians. The star of this western, however, was Japanese, and a popular matinee idol at the time. Reissued as Pride of Race, the film perpetuates the myth of the noble red man, going so far as to mock its own mythopoeia by employing a fake Indian. Chief Gray Otter's son, Tiah, played by Sessue Hayakawa, is a renegade impervious to his forced white man's schooling. Leading a small band of like malcontents, he attacks a payroll shipment protected by a cavalry escort. To prevent Tiah from killing the cavalry leader, Chief Gray Otter shoots him, and then falsifies the circumstances to bring honor-and a military burial-to his rebellious offspring. Acculturation, and its fatal effects, become the real renegades in Ince's spare, swiftly cut mini-epic of mistaken identity.