disgraced Comanche tribesman and the last of the wendigo hunters. It's revealed that Tonto is actually suffering severe mental illness and survivor's guilt for inadvertently causing the massacre of his tribe by the film's villains. To rationalize what he had done, he convinced himself that the cannibalistic Butch Cavendish was a wendigo, a non-existent monster used in Native American ghost stories to frighten children. The character wears black-and-white face paint and a deceased crow on his head. According to Johnny Depp, who played him, the inspiration for the costume was a painting entitled I Am Crow by Kirby Sattler. Tonto's horse Tonto first rode a horse named "White Feller" (White Fella/Fellah). When the 1938 Republic movie serial The Lone Ranger was being filmed, it was thought that having two white horses would be confusing, so the producers made "White Feller" a pinto horse, presumably on the theory that, being partly white, a pinto could still be named "White Feller". The radio series, noting that the pinto in the film had gone over well with audiences, decided that Tonto's mount would henceforth be a pinto. For several episodes, Tonto's new horse went unnamed, referred to only as "the paint horse" or simply "Paint". Eventually the name "Scout" was adopted. Reception The portrayal of Tonto has been seen by some Native Americans and others as degrading, notably by Native American author and poet Sherman Alexie. Tonto spoke in a pidgin, saying things like, "That right, Kemo Sabe", or "Him say man ride over ridge on horse". In 1975, poet and science fiction writer Paul O. Williams coined the term "tontoism" to refer to the practice of writing haiku with missing articles ("the", "a", or "an"), which he claimed made such haiku sound like Tonto's stunted English. Later adaptations of the character, such as The Legend of the Lone Ranger and the Filmation animated series, depict him as being articulate in English and speaking it carefully. Silverheels was not above making a little fun of the character, as in a classic sketch on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson with Carson playing a career counselor and Silverheels playing Tonto looking for a new job after working "thirty lousy years" as the Lone Ranger's faithful sidekick. When asked why he was looking for a new job, Tonto replies, "Him finally find out what Kemo Sabe means!" In translation In Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, "tonto"