The years following the American Civil War were particularly unjust to those who called the South home. Most families had suffered tremendous loss to the horrors of a war they didn't fully understand. Many Southern homesteads could not protect themselves from the horde of profiteers sweeping South at war's end, good and bad alike, all hoping to reap the spoils of a defeated South. Some by legal means, sure, but many others by any means it took. Buach Whelan (Boo-ock Whay-lan) is a big, strong lad of Irish descent who was raised by the Cherokee elders to become the white warrior Lone Eagle. He was too young to fight in the legal war but was near grown when the postwar Reconstruction hit his part of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Bein' one who honors duty, he is forced into the fight when his own home is taken, his family murdered. His struggle becomes a personal war he vows to see to the end. Such becomes the way for Buach Whelan. Such becomes a life lived by the legend of Swell Branch.