''Conquering Horse'' is

Frederick Manfred Frederick Feikema Manfred (January 6, 1912 – September 7, 1994) was an American writer of Westerns, very much connected to his native region: the American Midwest, and the prairies of the West. He named the area where the borders of Minnesota, ...

's first novel in a five-volume series he called ''

The Buckskin Man Tales The ''Buckskin Man Tales'' is a series of five Western novels by American author Frederick Manfred which traces themes through the 19th-century Great Plains. Each novel is set in a different time and place on the American frontier, with most o ...

''. It tells a mythic story about Indian life on the Great Plains before the arrival of white people to the region. Film director/writer

Michael Cimino Michael Antonio Cimino ( ; February 3, 1939 – July 2, 2016) was an American filmmaker. One of the " New Hollywood" directors, Cimino achieved fame with ''The Deer Hunter'' (1978), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Bes ...

and producer

Michael Gruskoff __NOTOC__ Michael Gruskoff is an American film producer. Life and career Born to a American Jews, Jewish family, Gruskoff started his career in the New York mailroom of the William Morris Agency, and then took a job with Creative Management Ass ...

attempted to adapt Manfred's novel to film,IndieWire: "Interview: Producer Michael Gruskoff on the Foreign Language Academy Award and International Hollywood" By Carlos Aguilar
June 2, 2014 but the project, which was in development at Universal in 1970, was tabled in 1971 because of budget issues. At one point in 1979, he reached a deal with United Artists to make the film, under the condition Heaven's Gate was a hit. The movie bombed, so this never came to fruition either.

References

*"Frederick Manfred." ''Dictionary of Literary Biography'' 212:185-197. 1999.
The Frederick Manfred Information Page
Books about Native Americans American historical novels Western (genre) novels 1959 American novels {{1950s-western-novel-stub