Young Eli thrives as an Indian. Though he begins life in captivity as a slave to the women, forced to scrape buffalo hides all the livelong day, he gradually rises in the tribe’s esteem. He hones his ability to use a bow and arrow while attacking on horseback. He takes scalps, white and Native American alike. And he learns that young Comanche gals like to “connubiate” under bearskin robes on long winter nights while their men are out raiding. What young man among us even to this day would have rather sat in a schoolhouse reading Emerson’s essays when such a transcendental life was to be had on the open range?

If played by Kevin Costner in the film version of his adventures, McCullough would have been shown going fully native and learning a heartwarming life lesson about aboriginal values that would have stayed with him during his dreary years back among his own race. But one of the many attributes of “The Son” is that it rarely treads the well-worn path. No culture, not even that of noble savages on the high plains, is revealed to have a genetic monopoly on virtue. Toshaway, McCullough’s Comanche mentor, tells him “you only get rich by taking things from other people.” And eventually Eli will agree: “It had become clear to me that the lives of the rich and famous were not so different from the lives of the Comanches: you did what you pleased and answered to no one.”