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Blood on the Arrow

1964 film by Sidney Salkow

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ1535656 ↗
Source-derived summary

Blood on the Arrow is a 1964 Western film directed by Sidney Salkow and written by Mark Hanna and starring Dale Robertson and Martha Hyer. The plot is about the sole survivor of an Apache ambush, who rides out to save a young boy who has been captured.

Plot

A U.S. Cavalry patrol including prisoner Wade Cooper (Dale Robertson) is ambushed as they are crossing the territory of Arizona by the Coyotero, a savage Indian tribe of the Apache nation. All are killed except Cooper who is left for dead. He wanders across the wasteland and is found near collapse by Nancy Mailer (Martha Hyer) who brings him to the Trading Post run by her husband, Clint Mailer (Wendell Corey). Mailer recognized Cooper as a hunted man with a price on his head, and refuses to assist in his recovery from wounds until his wife convinces him that he will die unless given medical attention. Mailer who has discovered a rich vein of gold and is resolved to go to any length to protect his find, is now blind with suspicion, both over the gold and jealousy of his wife, with Cooper at the Post.

As the tensions mount amongst the three, a Coyotero raid traps them and takes Mailers son, Tim (Dandy Curran) and holds him as hostage with the understanding that Mailer will deliver hundreds of rifles within seven days to the Indians for their continued warfare against the white man. Clint Mailer leaves to get the rifles and in the interim, Cooper and Nancy Mailer are drawn closer together with the revelation that Tim is not the son of Mailer. Mailer returns without rifles.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Blood on the Arrow” is 1964 film by Sidney Salkow. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Blood, Arrow and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1964—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1964-01-01. For this dossier, Blood, Arrow and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1964 film by Sidney Salkow” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1535656. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Blood on the Arrow”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Blood on the Arrow primary sources, Blood on the Arrow archive and Blood research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Blood on the Arrow”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Blood on the Arrow” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.