John Fire (Lame Deer)

The central figure of the entire work, Lame Deer is an elderly medicine man who has befriended co-author Richard Erdoes. Lame Deer, as a young adolescent, went into a "pit" dug into a hill, where he remained for four days and nights, in order to get the vision necessary to become a medicine man. From that time forward, he was recognized within his tribe as a spiritual leader but certainly had his sojourns into the white man's world. He drank, womanized, stole, and generally "sowed his wild oats" throughout his young adulthood, performing a variety of occupations in order to make money when necessary and retreating from white society whenever feasible. He eventually settled into a traditional Sioux lifestyle, replete with its rituals and ceremonies, presiding over many of them because of his status within the tribe. As a mature Indian, he has three abiding...