(Don't worry!
You didn't miss anything.
Cochise and his "blood brother", Indian Agent Tom Jeffords, find Nagotay, an Apache brave missing for months and thought to be dead.
The wounded brave relates how he and his brother Chalo inadvertently crossed the border into Guadalupe, an Arizona territory still under Spanish control, and how the two Apaches were framed and forced into a chain gang providing slave labor.
Cochise and Jeffords enter Guadalupe on the pretext of returning the horse Nagotay stole while making his escape, discover the region's police consist of American outlaws, and meet Senorita Serafina, the ruler of Guadalupe, who refuses to release Chalo.
When Jeffords asks to see the documents pertaining to the Spanish land grant, he discovers the Spanish birth certificate giving the Senorita legal control of the territory is a fake!
This story from
Dell's Four Color Comics #855 (1957) was adapted from the script of
the TV episode of the same name broadcast Jan. 14, 1958...and was published a couple of months
before the episode aired.
The adaptation was penned by long-time pulp, paperback, and comic writer Otto Binder and illustrated by journeyman artist Howard Purcell.
Cochise was played by the late Michael Ansara in what turned out to be his breakout role.
Broken Arrow was based on the novel Blood Brother by Elliot Arnold, which had already been made into a feature film starring Jeff Chandler as Cochise and a TV-movie starring Ricardo Montalban in the role.
The two-year show was the most prominent of several late-1950s TV series that featured Native Americans as heroes, rather than villains.
There's more info about the series
HERE.
Oddly, none of the lead Indian characters in these series was played by Native Americans!
(For example; Ansara was Syrian!
His parents emigrated to the US when he was two.)
We'll be presenting a comic story from another one, Brave Eagle, in the next month or so...
