HUMOROUS NAMES IN
SHERMAN ALEXIE’S
THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN
SEE ALSO “INDIAN HUMOR”
by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen
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The book becomes the movie!
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THE IMPORTANCE OF ALEXIE’S NAMES
• In The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven Sherman
Alexie uses names for ethnic
identification, character
development, plot
development, and most of all
humor, irony, and amusement.
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SAMUEL BUILDS-THE-FIRE
• Samuel Builds-the-Fire was the father
of Samuel Builds-the-Fire, Jr., who was
the father of Thomas Builds-the-Fire.
All three of them had the gift of
storytelling. Samuel could win bets by
telling stories about nearby random
objects (Alexie 132).
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• When all of his friends had died, and all of the
younger Indians on the reservation had no
time for his stories, “Samuel felt like the
horse must have felt when Henry Ford came
along” (Alexie 135).
• So he moved to Spokane and rented a small
studio apartment. He filled the four corners
of the room with plaster to make the room
round. Then he painted a black circle in the
middle of the ceiling that looked like the
smoke hole of a tipi. Now, “it felt like home”
(Alexie 135-136).
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THOMAS BUILDS-THE-FIRE
• “‘Dam it, Thomas,’ Junior yelled. “How
come your fridge is always…empty?”
(Alexie 12).
• Thomas walked over to the refrigerator,
saw it was empty, and then sat down
inside.
• “There,” Thomas said. “It ain’t empty
no more.” (Alexie 12)
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• Thomas was a storyteller “with ratty old
braids and broken teeth” that nobody
wanted to listen to (Alexie 66).
• Victor was at the Trading Post, and
Thomas looked at Victor, smiled, and
walked over to him.
• “Victor, I’m sorry about your father.”
• “How did you know about it?”
• “I heard it on the wind. I heard it from
the birds. I felt it in the sunlight.”
• “Also, your mother was just in here
crying” (Alexie 61).
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• When Victor asked Thomas to tell him a
story, Thomas closed his eyes and said,
• “There were these two indian boys who
wanted to be warriors. But it was too late to
be warriors in the old way. All the horses
were gone. So the two Indian boys stole a
car and drove to the city. They parked the
stolen car in front of the police station and
then hitchhiked back home to the
reservation” (Alexie 63).
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• As Victor and Thomas drove through Nevada
with Victor’s father’s ashes, they were
amazed at the lack of animal life. After Victor
had driven for sixteen hours, Thomas started
to drive.
• Finally, they saw their first animal in Nevada.
It was a long-eared jackrabbit (Alexie 71).
• Just as they were congratulating themselves
for finding something alive in the Nevada
desert, the jackrabbit darted out into the road
and under the wheels of the pickup (Alexie
72).
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• “Stop the…car,” Victor yelled.
• “Oh, man, he’s dead,” said Victor as he
looked down at the squashed animal.
• “Really dead.”
• “The only thing alive in this whole state and
we just killed it…. You drive for a thousand
miles and there ain’t even any bugs smashed
on the windshield. I drive for ten seconds
and kill the only living thing in Nevada.”
• “Yeah,” Victor said. “Maybe I should drive.”
• “Maybe you should.” (Alexie 72)
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• After the trip, Victor felt that he owed
Thomas something, so he handed
Thomas the cardboard box which
contained half of his father’s ashes.
• “Listen. I want you to have this.”
• Thomas took the ashes and smiled
(Alexie 74).
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Sherman Alexie’s Confessions of
a Part Time Indian
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LYNN CASEY
• Junior Polatkin and Lynn Casey kissed each
other. “Junior had never kissed a white
woman before and he used his tongue a lot,
reached for every part of her mouth, and
tried to find out if she tasted different.”
• “‘Irish,’ Lynn broke the kiss and said, as if
she read Junior’s mind. ‘I’m Irish’” (Alexie
238).
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NOAH CHIRAPKIN
• Noa Chirapkin is the only Skin (reservation
indian) Victor knows who has traveled off the
reservation.
• He told Victor he rode off for days and days,
“but there were no cars moving, no planes,
no bulldozers, no trees” (Alexie 106).
• Once the Others took Noah Chirapkin, tied
him down to the ground, poured water down
his throat until he drowned (Alexie 108).
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LESTER FALLSAPART and
JAMES MANYHORSES
• “Lester FallsApart passed out on top of the stove
and somebody turned the burners on high” (Alexie
10).
• “James Many Horses sat in the corner and told so
many bad jokes that three or four indians threw him
out the door into the snow” (Alexie 10).
• “James didn’t spend very much time alone in the
snow. Soon Seymour and Lester were there , too.
Seymour was thrown out because he kepf flirting
with all the women. Lester was there to cool off his
burns” (Alexie 10).
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EVE FORD
• When Thomas Builds-the-Fire is trying
to defend himself in court, the bailiff is
trying to restrain Eve Ford.
• She made a sudden “leap of faith”
across the room toward Thomas.
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• The bailiff tried to restrain her, but
“Eve stomped on the Bailiff’s big belly
until two tribal policemen tackled her,
handcuffed her, and led her away.
• “The judge was red-faced with anger;
he almost looked Indian. He pounded
his gavel until it broke” (Alexie 99).
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HUNGER AND PANG
• Victor says, “Sometimes it does feel
like we are all defined by the food we
eat…. My father and I would be potted
meat product, corned beef hash, fry
bread, and hot chili.”
• “Sometimes there was no food in the
house. I called my father Hunger and
he called me Pang.
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JAMES, VICTOR’S ADOPTED SON
• In a chapter named, “Jesus Christ’s HalfBrother is Alive and Well on the Spokane
Indian Reservation,” we are told about James
between 1966 and 1974.
• In 1967, Frank and Rosemary’s house
catches fire. Frank throws James out the
window, and Victor runs over to catch him
like a football hero, but James slips through
his fingers and ends up looking “almost
normal except the top of his head looks all
dented in like a beer can” (Alexie 111-112).
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• In 1969, Victor takes James to the Indian
clinic because he hasn’t spoken yet. “He’s
strong enough to hold his body off the
ground but he ain’t strong enough to lift his
tongue from the bottom of his mouth to use
the words for love or anger or hunger or good
morning.”
• “Maybe he’s going to howl out the words
when I least expect…, and he’ll yell out a
cuss word in church or a prayer in the middle
of a grocery store” (Alexie 116).
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• In 1969, Victor breaks his leg playing
basketball and is taken to the hospital,
where they ask him if this is his wife
and son. He says yes, and they ask
how old he is.
• Victor says “he’s almost four years old
and they say his physical development
is slow but that’s normal for an Indian
child” (Alexie 118).
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• In 1973 James would watch Victor play
basketball.
• He “sits on the sideline clapping when
my team scores and clapping when the
other team scores too. He’s got a good
heart.”
• “He always talks whenever I’m not in
the room or I’m not looking at him but
never when anybody else might hear”
(Alexie 128).
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DIRTY JOE
• Dirty Joe got his name because he
cruised the taverns at closing time and
drank all the half empties. Sadie and
Victor found him passed out drunk near
the carnival midway (Alexie 54).
• Victor said, “Sadie, let’s put him on the
roller coaster,” and she agreed (Alexie
55).
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• “We loaded Dirty Joe into the last
car and checked his pockets for
anything potentially lethal.
Nothing. Sadie and I stood there
and watched Dirty Joe ride a few
times around the circle, his head
rolling from side to side, back and
fourth. He looked like an old
blanket we gave away” (Alexie 56).
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JOHN-JOHN
• John-John and Joseph have a running
dialogue about his name:
• “Hey, John-John, why do you got two
first names?”
• “Cuz you have to say anything twice to
make it true?”
• “No, that ain’t it.”
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• “Cuz our parents really meant it when they
named me?”
• “I don’t think so.”
• “Maybe it’s just a memory device?”
• “Who knows?”
• “Cuz I’m supposed to be twins?”
• “No, man, that’s too easy.”
• “Cuz Mother always had a stutter?”
• Laughter
(Alexie 229-230).
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JOSEPH
• John-John had a picture of his older
brother Joseph, code named Geronimo.
Joseph was a missing-in-action jet
pilot, and in the picture he sat in full
military dress in front of an American
flag.
• “The photograph was folded, spindled,
mutilated” (Alexie 224, 227).
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• When someone told Joseph
that “Uranium has a half-life
of one hundred thirty-five
million years,” Joseph
responded, “Sh_t, I can tell
you stories that will last
longer than that” Alexie
225).
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THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO
• New York Times Book Review
editor Rich Nicholls called
Sherman Alexie’s The Lone
Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
Heaven “one of the major lyric
voices of our time” (Alexie xiii).
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• After Alexie’s agent had read his manuscript,
she said, “You’re not ready. I’ll take you on
as a client, but we’re going to have to work
on these stories for a year or two before I
send them out to publishers” (Alexie xv).
• “But wait,” Alexie said, “I thought I was one
of the major lyric voices of our time” (Alexie
xv).
• “According to the manuscript I’ve got sitting
in front of me, you’re not even one of the
major lyric voices on my desk.” (Alexie xv)
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• Alexie says that these days it is only
Diane, his wife, who refers to him as
“one of the major lyric voices of our
time” (Alexie xvi).
• And this happens only when he stutters
or mispronounces a word, or says
something “so inane and arrogant that
it defies logic” (Alexie xvi).
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• Alexie says, “This book could have
easily been titled The Lone Ranger and
Tonto Get Drunk, Fistfight, and Then
Fall into Each Other’s Arms and
Confess Their Undying Platonic Love
for Each Other in Heaven Followed by a
Long Evening of Hot Dog Regurgitation
and Public Urination” (Alexie xviii).
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FRANK MANY HORSES and
LESTER FALLSAPART
• Talking about forest fires, Victor says,
“Somebody always starts a fire down at
the Indian burial ground and it was
about time for the Thirteenth Annual
All-Indian Burial Grounds Fire, so Frank
and Lester and I ran down to the fire
station expecting to get hired (Alexie
111).
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JAMES MANY HORSES
• James Many Horses signs his letters as
“James Many Horses III.”
• He’s the only James Many Horses on
the reservation, “but there is a certain
dignity to any kind of artificial tradition”
(Alexie 168).
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NORMA MANY HORSES
• Norma Many Horses was really young, but
everybody called her “grandmother” anyway,
as a sign of respect (Alexie 199).
• “Norma was a warrior. She was powerful.
She could have picked up any two of the
boys and smashed their skulls together. But
worse than that, she would have dragged
them all over to some tipi and made them
listen to some elder tell a dusty old story”
(Alexie 65).
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• Norma was very very tall. When
Raymond asked what tribe she was
from, Jimmy said “Amazon” (Alexie
159).
• Jimmy liked Norma and told her that if
he stole 1,000 horses, he’d give 501 of
them to her.
• She responded, “And what other
women would get the other 499?”
(Alexie 160).
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MOSES MORNINGDOVE
• When Frank and Rosemary
MorningDove die in a fire James
becomes an orphan.
• Moses Morningdove says that since
Victor saved James’s life he should be
the one who raises him. It’s an Indian
tradition (Alexie 112).
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ROSEMARY MORNINGDOVE
• Near Christmas, Rosemary Morning Dove gave birth
to a boy. Rosemary said she was a virgin, but Frank
Many Horses said it was his.
• “Rosemary MorningDove named him ___ which is
unpronounceable in Indian and English but it means:
‘He Who Crawls Silently Through the Grass with a
Small Bow and One Bad Arrow Hunting for Enough
Deer to Feed the Whole Tribe.’”
• “We just called him James” (Alexie 110-111).
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LITTLE JIMMY ONE-HORSE
• When Simon liked Jimmy One-Horse, he
called him “Jimmy Sixteen-and-One-HalfHorses.” When he didn’t like him, he called
him “little Jimmy Zero-Horses.”
• Jimmy had a tumor. The X-rays showed that
it was the size of a baseball, “shaped like
one, too. Even had stitch marks” (Alexie
157).
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JUNIOR POLATKIN
• In a chapter entitled “Indian Education” (171180), Alexie tells about Junior Polatkin’s firstgrade through his sixth-grade.
• In first grade, Junior was always being
picked on, so his indian names became
“Junior Falls Down,” or “Bloody Nose,” or
“Steal-His-Lunch,” or “Cries-Like-a-WhiteBoy” (Alexie 172).
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• Junior Polatkin won the basketball game
between the Springdale Chargers and the
Wellpinit Redskins. Norma Many Horses
wrote up the win in the tribal newspaper:
• “Junior Polatkin tipi-creeped the Chargers by
stealing the inbounds pass and then stealing
the game away when he hit a three-thousandfoot jumper at the buzzer.”
• “I doubt we’ll be filing any charges against
Junior for theft,” Tribal Chief of Police David
WalksAlong said. “This was certainly a case
of self-defense” (Alexie 206).
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• Norma Many Horses gave Junior
Polatkin the Indian name of “Pete Rose”
because they have so much in common.
• “Pete Rose played major league
baseball in four different decades, has
more hits than anybody in history.”
• “After all that…greatness, he’s only
remembered for the bad stuff” (Alexie
210).
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• Junior Polatkin dreamed that he was a
gunfighter with braids and a ribbon
shirt. In his dreams, he gunned down
Wild Bill Hickock, Bat Masterson and
Billy the Kid.
• “Junior dreamed his name would be
Sonny Six-Gun and he dreamed that
white and Indian people would sing
ballads about him” (Alexie 232).
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POWWOW TAVERN
• After he graduated from High
School, Victor said, “Why should
we organize a reservation high
school reunion? My graduating
class has a reunion every weekend
at the Powwow Tavern” (Alexie
180).
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JIMMY SHIT PANTS
• Victor and his father saw Jimmy lying
on a sidewalk. “He wasn’t quite drunk,
a few sips…actually. He had on a little
red coat that couldn’t have been warm
enough for a Spokane winter. But he
had some good boots. Probably got
them from Goodwill or Salvation Army”
(Alexie 216).
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SIMON
• At the “First Annual All-Indian Horseshoe
Pitch and Barbecue,” Simon won the
horseshoe pitch with a double-ringer.
• He won the storytelling contest with a story
about when the salmon in the Spokane River
swam so thick that an Indian could walk
across the water on their backs (Alexie 147).
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• Simon won the coyote contest by saying that
“basketball should be our new religion. A
ball bouncing on hardwood sounds like a
drum.”
• Simon won the one-on-one basketball
tournament with a “jump shot from one
hundred years out.”
• And Seymour told Simon, “Winning all those
contests makes you just about as famous as
the world’s best xylophone player” (Alexie
147).
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• Simon was famous on the Spokane
Indian Reservation for driving
backwards. His car had only one gear,
reverse, using his rear-view mirror as
his guide.
• “He always obeyed posted speed
limits, traffic signals and signs” (Alexie
156).
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SILAS SIRIUS
• Silas Sirius was a reservation
basketball hero. Once he “grabbed that
defensive rebound, took a step, and
flew the length of the court, did a full
spin in midair, and then dunked that…
ball. I don’t mean it looked like he flew,
or it was so beautiful it was almost like
he flew. I mean, he flew, period”
(Alexie 47).
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SUZY SONG
• One day in 1969 when Victor comes
home from the Trading Post, Suzy
Song is feeding James and rocking him
like a boat or a three-legged chair.
• “I say no and I take James away and
put him in his crib and I move into
Suzy’s arms and let her rock and rock
me” (Alexie 117).
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VICTOR
• Victor is telling about a basketball game in
which his team had come from sixteen points
down in the fourth quarter, and Victor was
fouled. Both of his free throws clanged off
the rim.
• Before that time, he was a 90 % free-throw
shooter. After that night he was a 50 % freethrow shooter.
• He was a victim of what he called “PostTraumatic Free-Throw Stress Syndrome”
(Alexie xx-xxi).
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• VICTOR’S FATHER
• Victor’s father said he met Victor’s
mother at a party in Spokane. He tells
Victor…
• “We were the only two Indians at the
party. Maybe the only two Indians in
the whole town” (Alexie 27).
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• “I thought she was so beautiful. I
figured she was the kind of woman who
could make buffalo walk on up to her
and give up their lives” (Alexie 27).
• “Every time we went walking, birds
would follow us around. Hell,
tumbleweeds would follow us around”
(Alexie 27).
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• Victor’s father was “the only indian who
saw Jimi Hendrix play ‘The StarSpangled Banner’ at Woodstock”
(Alexie 24).
• Later Victor’s family visited Jimi
Hendrix’s grave, and had their picture
taken lying down next to the grave
(Alexie 31).
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• When Victor’s father died he was cremated
and his ashes were placed in a wooden box,
with enough left over to fill a cardboard box.
“He always was a big man,” Thomas said.
• Victor carried one box and Thomas carried
the other box to the pickup and they set the
two boxes behind the seats.
• Then they put a cowboy hat on the wooden
box and a Dodgers cap on the cardboard box
(Alexie 71).
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DAVID WALKSALONG
• David WalksAlong is Victor’s tribal
chairman.
• He got his name from the fact that
“WalksAlong walked along with BIA
policy so willingly that he took to
calling his wife a ‘savage in polyester
pants.’”
(Alexie 94)
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TREMBLE DANCER
• Victor is in love with Tremble Dancer,
but he’s a Skin (who lives on the
reservation), and she’s an Urban (who
left the reservation and came back).
• The tribe doesn’t like the Urbans
because they have developed Whiteman diseases (Alexie 105).
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• At first Tremble Dancer isn’t sick, but “she
does have burns and scars over her legs.
When she dances around the fire at night,
she shakes from the pain” (Alexie 105).
• “Sometimes Tremble Dancer waits for me at
the tree, all we have left. We take off our
clothes, loincloth, box dress. We climb the
branches of the tree and hold each other,
watching for the Tribal Council.”
• “Sometimes her skin will flake, fall off, float
to the ground. Sometimes I taste parts of her
breaking off into my mouth. It is the taste of
blood, dust, sap, sun” (Alexie 107).
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OLD JESSE WILDSHOE
• Talking about Jimi Hendricks, Victor’s father said,
“Only the good die young,” Victor’s mother said,
“Only the crazy people choke to death in their own
vomit” (Alexie 32).
• Victor’s father asked, “Why you talking about my
hero that way?” (Alexie 32).
• Victor’s mother responded, “Old Jesse WildShoe (a
fancydancer) choked to death on his own vomit and
he ain’t anybody’s hero” (Alexie 32, 122).
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JANA WIND
• In 1970, Victor went to a Christmas party at
Jana Wind’s house. He got really drunk and
Jana’s father, Ray, challenged him to a game
of one-on-one basketball.
• They drove over to the highschool to the
outside court which was covered with two
feet of snow.
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• So Ray “smiles and pulls out a bottle
of kerosene and pours it over the court
and lights it up and pretty soon the
snow is all melted down…
• …along with most of Lester
FallsApart’s pants since he was
standing too close to the court when
Ray lit the fire” (Alexie 121).
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JULIUS WINDMAKER and
ARISTOTLE POLATKIN
• Julius Windmaker was the best
basketball player on the reservation.
He was “the latest of a long line of
reservation basketball heroes going all
the way back to Aristotle Polatkin, who
was shooting jumpshots exactly one
year before James Naismith
supposedly invented basketball”
(Alexie 45).
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WOVOKA
• Wovoka was the Paiute Ghost Dance
Messiah.
• He said, “All Indians must dance,
everywhere, keep on dancing.”
• “Indians who don’t dance, who don’t believe
in this word, will grow little, just about a foot
high, and stay that way. Some of them will be
turned into wood and burned in fire” (Alexie
104).
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RAY YOUNG BEAR
• Ray Young Bear said,
“There is something about
trains, drinking, and being
an indian with nothing to
lose” (Alexie 130).
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Sherman Alexie’s Confessions of a Part-Time Indian
Alexie is the author and the illustrator.
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SHERMAN ALEXIE WEB SITE
SHERMAN ALEXIE:
http://www.fallsapart.com/
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