Keeping the Promise (1997) on Netflix

Plot summary

In 1768, Matt Hallowell and his father build a cabin in the Maine wilderness for the family still to come. His father sets out for Quincy, Massachusetts, to fetch Matt's mother, sister and a newborn sibling, and promises to return in seven weeks, leaving the boy his father's watch and a hunting rifle to guard the homestead and its crops. A stranger, Ben Loomis, steals the rifle, and Matt falls into a river while chasing him. Penobscot Indians he had been taught to fear pull him out, and the chief, Saknis, treats his injured leg. Saknis takes Matt's copy of Robinson Crusoe and brings it back, asking whether a knife or a book wins a fight. He then orders Matt to teach his grandson, Attean, to read.