James Young Deer

Younger Johnson or Jim Young Deer, was born James Young Johnson in Washington, D.C.[1] Although he was identified in the early Hollywood trade paper Moving Picture World as of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, his ancestry is of the Nanticoke people of Delaware.

Together with his wife and partner Lillian St. Cyr, (Winnebago), the couple were labeled an "influential force" in the production of one-reel Westerns during the first part of the silent film era.

[3] Questions were raised about Young Deer's purported Winnebago background when film historians were unable to verify much about his origins.

[6] After meeting Lillian St. Cyr, who was living and working in Washington, D.C. for a Kansas senator, Young Deer and she married on April 9, 1906.

Young Deer eventually ran the company's West Coast Studio operations in Edendale.

[6] Young Deer acted in, wrote, or directed approximately 150 silent movies at Pathé's West Coast Studio.

Movie historian William K. Everson wrote, "[D]uring this period the Indian became accepted as a symbol of integrity, stoicism, and reliability ..."[6] Young Deer's films have been noted as early Westerns "without the cliches of hostile Indian warriors or wagon train attacks."

In the 1930s, after talkies came to dominate film, he worked occasionally as a second-unit director on independently produced low-budget B movies and serials.

He received a military burial at the Long Island National Cemetery as James Young Johnson, veteran of the Spanish–American War.

However, in 2008 the Library of Congress added White Fawn's Devotion, one of Young Deer's few surviving pictures, to its National Film Registry.