He beat up people at the school he went to. Later in his life he killed horses on the rodeo circuits. This went against his own beliefs his was taught, and he needed to beg for forgiveness.
Tom was an Indian kid living in the mountains when Blue Elk, a Ute Indian leader who herded his people into reservations, finds him and brings him back to the town for money. Tom is forced to stay with a boy who is told to watch him, and he is deprived of his naturalistic traditions and becomes very angry and attacks people and breaks things. Eventually he begins to accept things and goes into town one day and rides a crazed horse and a man named Red finds him and brings him to his ranch to ride wild “broncs”.
Red trains Tom to ride horses and he also rubs a very violent influence on Tom. Red teaches Tom how to scam people, and to take his anger out on horses and nature. Tom becomes more and more aggressive when riding horses, and he rides some to death. He begins to realize that he is a destructive person when he is injured badly and cannot walk again in the hospital. He realizes that everything he did was against his morals, what he was taught. And for these actions he begins to seek forgiveness.
As he leaves the hospital he begins to reflect on his life and realizes that he has been through a lot. He comes back to the base of the mountain, Peidra Town, where he finds work as a shepherd. He takes this job and slowly the sights and feelings he gets watches over the sheep. One day he sees a bear and chases it, deciding if he should kill it or not and sees it and lets it go. He realizes that if he killed that bear he would kill all that he was raised upon. He would be shooting himself. It is at that moment that he realizes that he must come back to what he used to be. He starts a penance trip up the mountain where he talks with the All-Mother and acts as he used to, stripping naked and cleansing himself and living off of the land and begins to love nature again.
Thomas Blackbull was a Ute Indian who was taken from his natural life and put into the white mans world he was a legend of the Ute culture that when he was taken away this legend died. He becomes a legendary bronc rider in rodeo circuit. He hurt himself and this legend died, He goes back to his hometown and his Ute spirit come back to he him and his legend the legend is reborn.
