Marlow comes face to face with the corruption and despair that lies at the heart of human existence when he undertakes a journey on behalf of a Belgian trading company up the Congo River in search of the tormented white ivory trader, Kurtz.
Whirlwind, war leader of the Wolf Tail Lakota in the mid-eighteenth century, sets off a tragic chain of events when he comes across a white man near death from a bullet wound, and though confused over the use of guns, or "holy irons, " he decides to bring the man back to his camp.