About the Production
In this prequel to J.T. Petty's "The Burrowers," a young brave named Red Earth comes of age in the season of the Burrowers. In trying to teach his younger brother to hunt, he stumbles onto a menace that threatens to destroy his entire family.
Nearly a century before the U.S.A would claim their lands, a Lakota family moves through the Indian Territories West of the nascent states, avoiding the first intrepid Caucasians encroaching on their hunting grounds.
Red Earth takes his younger brother, Waiting Crow, into the grasslands to kill meat that will feed their family and earn their father's respect. They fail in the hunt, and after a long and exhausting day, prepare to return home in shame. But on their course, they discover a doe, paralyzed and buried alive. They disinter the animal, murder it by bow, and drag it home as their own kill.
The flesh of the doe is tainted with a poison that draws the creatures that first paralyzed it and buried it alive. All flesh is food to the Burrowers, and when they come to reclaim their dinner, they take more than the doe.