I t's hard to find an atheist in the small town of Lame Deer on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Downtown is a gas station, a trade store, two video stores and a florist.
Funerals keep the florist busy.
Most of the funerals are Catholic, but seven other denominations operate on the reservation as well. Six were brought to the reservation by white men and the other is the Native American Church, which was brought to the reservation in 1904 after arising among Plains tribes in the late 1880s. A highly personalized religion, whose main foundation is the peyote ceremony, it replaced the vision quests common among many Indian tribes. Many of its members call the Native American Church the only institutionalized religion that represents and preserves their native identity. And while some religions on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation have tried to adapt to Native American culture, others continue to press ahead with unbending belief that their ways are the only ways.