![]() ![]() ![]() Army taught Lame Deer more about the English language than his formal education ever had.Īs Lame Deer matured, he recognized that the pipe religion held more value to him than peyote rituals or Christian teachings. Time spent in saloons, jail cells, and the U.S. Throughout his early adulthood he was variously a wanderer and a prisoner a criminal and a law officer a sheepherder and a bootlegger a hippie and a veteran a womanizer and a holy man. Lame Deer compared his role as a heyoka to that of being a rodeo clown, describing the latter as “almost like doing spiritual work.” Lame Deer’s contradictory nature was not limited to his time as a rodeo clown. A heyoka is someone visited by Thunder-Beings in a dream, and they are known for their contrary and often comedic behaviors. Lame Deer was also a heyoka, or sacred clown, within his tribe. He joined the rodeo circuit, first as a rider and later as a cross-dressing rodeo clown named Alice Jitterbug. His father gifted him livestock, but Lame Deer soon traded these for rodeo gear and a Model T Ford. Her death altered his family and transformed his life. Lame Deer’s mother died when he was 17 years old. Throughout his adult life, he preferred this traditional Lakota name to the Christian name (John Fire) he had been given. Young Lame Deer understood he was to take his great-grandfather’s name and awoke from the vision pleased. Eventually, a vision came to him in which his great-grandfather, Chief Tahca Ushte (Lame Deer), appeared before him. He spent four days and nights alone in a vision pit on a high hill, finding solace in his pipe. He wished to become a medicine man, and the ceremony would mark his transition from boy to man. Of his school years he later said, “They couldn’t make me into an apple – red outside and white inside.”Īt the age of 16, he participated in his first hanblechia, or vision-seeking. Lame Deer then attended boarding school for two years before running away. He attended the school for six years but did not learn to read, write, or speak English. The school attempted to assimilate American Indian children into Euro-American culture, and Lame Deer claimed the teachers only taught 3 rd grade. He was largely raised by his maternal grandparents before being forced to attend day school on the reservation. John Fire Lame Deer was born near the Rosebud Indian Reservation in 1903 to parents Silas Fire Let-Them-Have-Enough (Hunkpapa Lakota) and Sally Red Blanket (Miniconjou Lakota). The opening in the bowl is our mouth and the smoke rising from it is our breath, the visible breath of our people.” - Lame Deer The stem is our backbone, the bowl our head. ![]()
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