The epic western Dances With Wolves is the story of a lone man sent to the American frontier during the Civil War. After heroically rallying his unit while attempting to commit suicide, John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) is given the opportunity to be reassigned and chooses a distant frontier post. When Dunbar reaches his post he finds it has been abandoned and left in ruins by the previous soldiers stationed there. Refusing to leave his post he sets out to fix things and soon finds himself in contact with a local Sioux tribe and begins a diplomatic undertaking with them. While befriending the Sioux, he meets Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell) who is a white woman raised by the Sioux, and eventually marries her. Receiving the name Dances With Wolves from the natives because of his pet wolf, Two Socks, Dunbar slowly becomes very enveloped in the Sioux life near to forgetting that he isn't one of them. That all changes when the Army comes to reclaim his post and everything changes for him as he becomes the enemy of a state on the edge of the Native American frontier.