Women working to ID unmarked graves, map Lame Deer cemetery
By LAURA TODE
Of The Gazette Staff
The Lame Deer cemetery sits at the base of Yellow Mule and Head Chief Hill, a cliff face where those two young warriors rode their ponies over the edge, choosing suicide rather than face a white man's death dangling from a hanging tree.
As the story is told, in 1890 the Northern Cheyenne were starving, camped at the top of the bench. In desperation, the young men killed a local rancher's cow to feed their people. Fearing the consequences of their actions, they captured and killed the rancher as well.
Today, white boulders mark where the suicide warriors fell.
Beneath the rugged face of the hillside is a scattered pattern of headstones, crosses and markers standing in a tangle of knee-deep grass and weeds. Between the graves that are marked lay the unknown - 114 of them. Those people buried there were precious enough in their deaths to be laid to rest in the small cemetery, and Janet Mullin and Teddy McMakin, a Northern Cheyenne, believe they're precious enough to be honored still.
The two women have taken it upon themselves to clean up the cemetery, identify those unmarked graves and map those that are marked.
Mullin has a yellow legal pad curled at the edges where every identifiable plot is listed, and she is in the process of entering each in a database and labeling a big map with the names of each of the deceased. For all the work they've done in the library, the women have spent nearly as much time on the cemetery grounds.
After the heavy snowstorm earlier this month, broken branches were scattered across most of the cemetery, and the women, working alone among the spirits, cleared all the branches from atop the mounds and sunken graves.
Every visit they make reveals a new, unique marker or another place that could be an unmarked grave. A sunny October afternoon provided what may be one of their last visits to the cemetery before the arrival of winter.
"See, some of these people really do care about their loved ones," McMakin said, sweeping her palm over a grave without a weed or blade of grass on the mound. Like many of the well-tended graves, it was adorned with silk flowers, glass figurines and a homemade wooden cross.
Some family plots are fenced. Inside, the graves are immaculate and mementos have been carefully placed. They are the exception in the Lame Deer cemetery.
Some of the graves are marked with a pile of rocks, others with a wooden stake, possibly all that's left of a tumbled-down cross.
Few of the graves are marked with permanent headstones made of granite or marble, save for the white headstones that stand sentinel over the final resting places of fallen soldiers.
Many of the veterans are Indian scouts, who served in the early battles before Montana became a state and before reservations were established.
"We have no way of controlling our range ? our horses and cattle ? so they're free to run helter skelter anywhere and everywhere," McMakin said turning her eyes from the sunny cliff face that edges the cemetery to the ground where dried dung barely missed a small metal grave marker.
Missing its embossed plate, the marker provides no identity as to the grave's resident. Most of the graves in Lame Deer's cemetery are identified by generic aluminum markers. As permanent as they can be for something that costs only a few dollars, they're still not horse or vandal-proof.
McMakin stoops to pull a well established weed from a grave with a missing plaque.
The missing engravings add to the ladies' tasks. Not only do they have to identify graves that are evident only by a mound or sunken square of soil, they're also perplexed by graves that are marked but so poorly maintained the markings can't be deciphered.
Several lichen covered stones are inscribed with the letters BC, legible only by touch on the worn granite. A round wooden marker speaks to the age of the grave, but, like so many, not the identity.
Sage grows wild in the cemetery and has sprung up on the graves of Dull Knife Morning Star and Little Wolf, two of the oldest graves in the cemetery.
"Dull Knife and Little Wolf gave their lives for us and dedicated their whole lives to getting us home to the reservation," McMakin said.
Dull Knife was also known as Morning Star, the name written in the Cheyenne language on the granite marker, along with 1883, the year he died. A pipe lies on Little Wolf's grave.
The most recent grave is that of McMakin's cousin, Hazel Whiteman Kills Knife, who passed away about the same time the women began their work on the cemetery.
"Hazel is probably the only one that's got a 2000 anything on their marker," Mullin said. "All the rest are buried at their own family cemetery."
Neither of the women could remember the last burial before hers.
Most of the folks in Lame Deer who die are buried in family plots on home ground. The women speculate that the condition of the cemetery is a deterrent when a family loses a loved one.
"If someone has a grave out back of the house they can go out and tend it every day and they know it will be taken care of that way," Mullin said.
As they stroll through the cemetery, the women meet at the rusted fence that surrounds a baby's grave. The fence is caved in by a large boulder that has rolled down the sandstone rim to within inches of the headstone.
"We've got to get out here and fix this, don't we," Mullin said to McMakin.
The pair doesn't know why the cemetery has fallen to ruins, but they speculate it's reflective of the discouragement felt by so many of the residents of Lame Deer. First alcohol, then drugs and, all the while unemployment has risen, McMakin said. She can't begin to guess the number of graves that belong to people who were killed as a result of alcohol or drugs or the accidents and strife caused by substance abuse.
The cemetery keeps its own count. Date of death minus date of birth: age 26, 16, 31, 19. The headstones speak of lives cut short, no reason given, none needed.
McMakin and Mullin refuse to let the community fall prey to drugs, and alcohol, and with an almost personal vendetta, they're taking on methamphetamine abuse in Lame Deer. Several weeks ago, they hosted a free concert and dance with area musicians taking center stage. It's the second show they've put on to give locals a reason to get together and raise awareness of the dangers of meth.
"We have to strike out at the thing that's endangering our lifestyle ? our lives," McMakin said.
"Positive, we have to do something positive," Mullin said.
The women have taken on the cemetery as one of their various "projects."
Around Lame Deer Mullin and McMakin are called "War Ponies" because of their tenacity and whole-hearted dedication to the community. The women have made their mark on Lame Deer in dozens of ways. Mullin started a small museum of photos and clippings she has gathered from area residents and the public library. McMakin started the local Chamber of Commerce and is an advocate for health and safety issues in the community. At one time she held a seat on the tribal council.
Cleaning up the cemetery is important not only for the community of Lame Deer, the women said, but also for those who want to return to explore their roots.
McMakin left the reservation for a time, married a white rancher, but found her way home like she hopes more Northern Cheyenne will do. She's older now and for all the work she has ahead of her at the Lame Deer cemetery, she said she's not interested in being laid to rest there.
"I want to be taken up on that hill," said McMakin pointing east up the highway from the cemetery. "Be drifted away on the breeze. I'll be here when the first bird sings in the spring. I'll be the butterfly. You'll see me in the water, and you'll feel me on your face when the wind blows.
"I'm not afraid to die."
Contact Laura Tode at Laura Tode or at 657-1392.
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Last updated on November 05, 2005