As this episode opens, the Vail family is sitting down to a meal. The oldest girl Melissa, who seems somehow different from the rest of the family, goes out to the barn to milk a cow. While there she is kidnapped by a member of the Kiowa tribe. At first we think that this is a simple kidnapping by a savage race of people and a posse is organized to pursue Melissa and her abductors. But as this episode progresses it becomes obvious that there is a very compelling reason for the abduction as Melissa's father seems to be only interested in following the Kiowa party and is reluctant to actually engage them. In what turns out to be a touching episode of Gunsmoke, (and without revealing too much of the conclusion) the plot of, "Kiowa" is an indictment of racial prejudice by depicting a man who has to deny and hide who and what he is to advance in the world.
—Steve Sassi