Continuity mistake: At the fair when Isabelle goes to give Suzanna the baby, she actually hands it to her in one shot, but in the next (a split second) Suzanne shows no sign as if the baby ever left Isabelle's hand. (01:38:24)
Continuity mistake: Just after Samuel and Alfred say that they are going to enlist, Samuel has a weird looking face and notice Alfreds shoulder right behind him, then Susanna takes a few steps up the stairs very sad and Samuel walks a couple of meters towards her and then she leaves and then it switches to Samuel with the same funny looking face and Alfred is again right behind him. (00:24:20)
Continuity mistake: After Susannah's arrival at the ranch she takes a walk around. When she passes by the Deckers the sun has already set. In the next shot, when she talks to Isabell Two, the sun is shining again. (00:12:40)
Continuity mistake: When Tristen arrives home after being gone for many years - he sits with his father, Col. William. The Colonel has a chalk board around his neck and he writes, "Am Happy." Tristen replies, "Me too." The next scene shows the "Am Happy" chalk board again, but the printing is different from when the Colonel wrote on it in the previous scene. (01:22:00)
Continuity mistake: In the farewell scene when the boys are leaving to enlist in Canada, we first get to see Samuel hugging Decker and Alfred hugging. Behind Alfred's neck we get a glimpse of Isabel Two's head as she is jumping up. This can only be Isabel Two approaching Tristan. In the next shot we get to see this again as the camera focus on Isabel Two running towards Tristan and jumping up into his arms. (00:27:25)
Continuity mistake: When the young Tristan is wounded by the bear, his arm gets hurt and the sleeve of his shirt torn. When his father treats a few seconds later the sleeve is intact again and the wound seems to be on his chest. (00:05:50)
Continuity mistake: When Tristan, Alfred and Suzanna run into each other at the fair, the baby is asleep in one shot, then awake in the next and back asleep once again in the next shot.
Continuity mistake: During the war scene, when Samuel gets grazed by a bullet and Tristan covers him for protection, Samuel's hat falls off. The hat reappears, then disappears again. (00:35:57)
Continuity mistake: When Tristin, his father, the Indian, and another man are in a bar trying to get four drinks after they were going to hunt the big grizzly bear, the bartender will not give them four drinks because of the Indian. Watch as Anthony Hopkins tries to stop Brad Pitt and as they keep looking back at the bartender and the other people. If you watch the beer with no foam, it is a little less than full and then it becomes full again. The foam also changes a little. (01:06:08)
Continuity mistake: When Colonel Ludlow and Susannah are eating dinner alone and hear the Decker's laughter from the room next door, they decide to join them. Susannah grabs her plate and her glass, and the Colonel his plate and the wine decanter. When entering the Decker's kitchen, there is nothing but their own utensils, plates and glasses on the table. If Pet brought more mugs and maybe also glasses to the table, she must have been very quick since it takes seven seconds from the last shot of her sitting at the table to Susannah starts pouring wine into a black mug, and gives it to Pet. Even if we only see Susannah pouring wine into one glass in addition to the mug, there are two kitchen glasses on the table filled with wine. When they raise their glasses there is no longer any glass at Pet's place, neither at Decker's. Pet must have given her glass away to the Colonel which doesn't make sense since he left his own almost full wine glass at the dining room. The amount of wine in the Colonel's new glass also varies from shot to shot measured by the decoration. (00:31:20)
Revealing mistake: When Tristan kill the guy in the liquor storage and the hay fork goes through his chest, you can see that parts of the hay fork's tines closest to his body are not covered with blood. (01:51:05)
Continuity mistake: The bear strikes his left paw at Young Tristan, and he stabs his knife in the paw, but when the bear leaves, he limps on the right front leg. (This is also mentioned on the production designers' commentary track.). (00:05:20)
Continuity mistake: Tristan finds a calf with its legs caught in barbed wire. In the next shot, when Tristan gets down on his knees to free it, its head is also totally entangled. (01:00:15)
Visible crew/equipment: In a scene that occurs after the confrontation in the bar, Tristan is riding his horse. At one point, he rides off very quickly, and the horse's hoof kicks up a flourescent orange traffic cone. It can be seen at the bottom of the screen, but only in the VHS version. (01:08:00)
Continuity mistake: In the liquor storage Tristan cuts the other guy on the cheek, and he starts bleeding immediately. This scene is intercut with a scene where Susannah cuts off a lock of her hair. When we return to the storage, the guy takes his hand to the cheek, but now there is much less blood than it was only a couple of seconds earlier, and it has not been wiped off. (01:50:35)
Continuity mistake: Susannah visits Tristan in prison. Whenever the camera is on her her face is touching the bars and Tristan's is a bit away, and vice versa. (01:43:40)
Factual error: During the battle scene the voiceover says that it is February 1915. The battle being portrayed is obviously the Second Battle of Ypres because it involves Canadian troops and it's the first time that gas was used in the war. The actual battle didn't take place until the end of April 1915.
Continuity mistake: When young Tristan gets attacked by the bear he looks for cover behind a huge tree. In the fight he cuts off one of the bear's claws which falls to the ground. When his father, brother, and One Stab come to help him Old Stab finds the claw on the opposite side of the tree. (00:05:55)
Continuity mistake: In the end when they have killed the bad guys you can see the indian singing and dancing over them with a knife and he throws his hat off and it lands on the ground at the car but then there is a wide shot off the whole scenario and the hat is gone. (02:00:30)
Continuity mistake: When Susannah visits Tristan in the prison, she turns her head away as he says "Go home to Alfred", but in the next shot she is looking at Tristan again. (01:45:35)
Answer: Very early in the story when one stab is narrating, he's kind of introducing everybody and makes a reference about Decker having "illegally" married an Indian woman, and there are several references to the fact that the father was not happy working for a government that was killing Indians and also went out of his way to make sure they were in no way discriminated against. I think it's possible that may be why they were looking for Decker and why Colonel went out of his way to hide his living there.
I believe Decker had been a bootlegger. That would be the reason why the O'Banions (sellers of booze themselves), were with the sheriff when they came looking for Decker at the Ludlow's ranch. And also, the reason why the O'Banions didn't want to say what Decker was wanted for because.it was their own personal vendetta concerning bootleg whiskey. Maybe they had reason to believe that he was still selling bootleg whiskey around those parts. Also, later in the movie, when Tristan returns home after 7 years, Decker says to him "There's good money in bootlegging if you know what you're doing." And, Decker says that with a huge smile. Like he definitely knew what he was talking about and could definitely give Tristan some pointers about being a bootlegger.
Alcohol wasn't illegal until well after World War 1. The initial scene with the O'Bannons takes place before the boys go off to war, and it's stated afterwards that Alfred voted for the Volstead Act making alcohol illegal.
Not sure about this. At the time the sheriff comes looking for Decker, it's roughly 1915, and liquor is not yet illegal.