He raids a resupply column sent to a U.S. Army fort, but brings the commander's daughter Katie Smith to her father unharmed, requesting to negotiate peace.

Tokei-ihto ventures to the sacred caves of the Great She-Bear, the Band's Totem animal, which are also the gold's source, to seek the blessing of the spirits to their departure.

The Western genre had never enjoyed the approval of the political establishment in the German Democratic Republic: the novels of Karl May, the most prominent German-language author associated with the topic, were not allowed to be re-published in the country until 1982.

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the ruling power in East Germany, viewed May as a writer whose supposedly positive portrayal of the colonisation of the Old West by the United States ignored the uprooting and genocide of Native Americans while glorifying the white settlers, making him a promoter and a precursor of an expansionist ideology of "blood and soil" and  – in the words of Klaus Mann  – the "Cowboy mentor of the Führer".

Henrich's books were written from the Native American perspective, and she studied Lakota culture extensively to convey an authentic depiction of them, and even conducted several tours to the United States and Canada to live among their tribes.

[3] The attitude of the DEFA studio – the country's state-owned cinema monopoly  – to Westerns changed in the early 1960s, with the release of a wave of Karl May films produced in West Germany, especially the series directed by Harald Reinl which began with Apache Gold in 1963.

[4] Producer Hans Mahlich – one of the veteran members of the studio who participated in the making of some of DEFA's most widely known pictures, like Castles and Cottages and The Sailor's Song – was the first to promote the idea, arguing that such films would become a great commercial success.

"[7] Therefore, they sought to imbue the planned picture with themes which would suit state officials and turn it into "politically correct entertainment":[8] Henrich's novels, with their emphasis on the negative portrayal of the white colonists and their already established popularity with the audience, were selected to be adapted to the screen.

In a trait that would characterize all of DEFA's Westerns, while The Sons of Great Bear was an East German work, the production team was multinational, with citizens of several other Eastern Bloc countries.

Mitić, a student of the Sport and Physical Education Faculty in the University of Belgrade, worked as a stuntman and an extra in several Westerns produced in his country, beginning with the 1963 Old Shatterhand.

[14] However, while carefully recreating the lives of the Lakota, there are several mistakes in regards to the other side: for example, Major Samuel Smith clearly wears the rank of a colonel; a regimental flag in his headquarters carries the inscription "United States of Amerika", and a map shows the U.S.-Mexican Border as it was before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, with Mexico stretching all the way to Oregon.

[15] Henrich, who served as the producers' adviser, was "fanatic about details": when several horses refused to be mounted without a saddle and had to be fitted with one, she resigned her post, insisting that Native Americans rode bareback.

[14] Principal photography for The Sons of Great Bear was conducted in summer 1965, and took place in the Socialist Republic of Montenegro and in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains.

[19] The Sons of Great Bear turned into an instant success upon its release, owing also to two external factors: the first was its appeal to young audiences, as many East German children were already acquainted with Henrich's books;[10] and another was the low supply of new pictures for 1966: over half of DEFA's productions intended to be released during the year  – 12 out of 21, most prominently Kurt Maetzig's The Rabbit Is Me and Frank Beyer's Trace of Stones – were banned as a result of the XI Plenum of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany which took place between the 16th and 18 December 1965,[20][21] in which the allegations of rising Politburo member Erich Honecker, who blamed the cinema industry for promoting values incongruous with Marxism, were widely accepted by state functionaries.

[24] It also became an export success, and was soon distributed in the Federal Republic of Germany – an uncommon achievement for a DEFA picture in the days prior to Chancellor Willy Brandt's rapprochement with the East German government.

[29] Dartmouth College Professor Gerd Gemünden believed the film's popularity in the German Democratic Republic, and that of its sequels, could be attributed to the manner in which both the personal biography of Mitić and the characteristics of his screen personae resonated with both the audience and the establishment.

[31] Another factor was Mitić's character's ideally German behavior: with his athleticism, serenity, leadership and express anti-alcoholism  – he was often seen to spill "firewater" offered to him, a characteristic shared also by Karl May's heroes[32] – he symbolized a "particularly Teutonic form of model citizen".

[21] In addition to all this, while he already worked with Western filmmakers, he chose to emigrate to East Berlin – a welcome contrast to the constant flow of local actors defecting to the Federal Republic.

[30] David T. McNab and Ute Lischke stressed that while purporting to present an authentic depiction of Native Americans, it also delivered orthodox East German political messages: the film's ending, in which Tokei-ihto declares his people will settle on the "rich fertile land" to "raise tame buffalo, forge iron, make ploughs" champions "no 'Indian' philosophy" but sounds more like "a new way for a worker and collective farming state".

"[33] The favorable reception of The Sons of Great Bear surpassed by far what DEFA directors had anticipated, and paved the way for the making of some dozen sequels from the same genre of Indianerfilme, which for the large part also starred Mitić and became the studio's best known and most successful film series.

[34] Released for virtually every summer until the 1980s, they included such pictures as Chingachgook, die große Schlange, Spur des Falken, Weiße Wölfe, Tödlicher Irrtum, Osceola, Tecumseh, Ulzana, Kit & Co [de], Blutsbrüder, Severino and Der Scout.