William "Good Lance" Eagle Shirt was a Native American actor, performer, and screenwriter who was born and raised on the Great Plains of South Dakota.

[1][2] He appeared in a string of Hollywood films in the 1910s and is credited with co-writing two of them.

[3] William and his family — all Oglala Sioux — were forced to settle on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where he met and married a woman named Mattie; the pair had a daughter named Bessie.

After performing in Wild West shows, he began appearing in silent films.

At some point, he remarried a woman named Emma; the pair divorced in 1942 with no children.