A western saga about empire building, it follows the adventures of Yancey Cravat, a lawyer and newspaperman from Wichita, who joins the Oklahoma Territory land rush in 1889. Soon he and his family are citizens of Osage. Beset by wanderlust, Yancey joins the Cherokee Strip land rush in 1893, leaving wife Sabra behind to run the newspaper and raise their son, Cimarron. By 1907, Yancey is back at home as Oklahoma becomes a state. During the oil boom, he refuses to join a scheme to cheat the Indians out of their oil rich land, and then disappears again. In 1929, Sabra is elected Oklahoma's first Congresswoman, Cimarron is married to an Indian princess, and Yancey still hasn't returned.