Legend

Welcome to TziShO (Niukonska for skY Lodge), 

come, come in and take a seat. We  will pass the pipe as friends 

and then I will tell you a story of our Ancestors

 and thru this story you may learn of our ways and our

culture. These Legends are of our life and tell us how to live

with all life in this our world, and I'd like to share this one

with you.

I'm posting a Lakota Legend as told by Lame Deer

in 1967 on the Rosebud Reservation. I found this legend in my

book "American Indian Myths and Legends" which is one of the many

books I use for source material. This Legend posting is dedicated

to Honor Looking Horse, Carrier of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf

Pipe of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations as he leads us all

towards World Peace. The Legend is:

"The White Buffalo Woman"

The Sioux are a warrior tribe, and one of their proverbs says,

"Woman shall not walk before man." Yet White Buffalo Woman is the

dominant figure of their most important legend. The medicine man

Crow Dog explains, "This holy woman brought the sacred buffalo

calf pipe to the Sioux. There could be no Indians without it.

Before she came, people didn't know how to live. They knew

nothing. The Buffalo Woman put her sacred mind into their minds."

At the ritual of the sun dance one woman, usually a mature and

universally respected member of the tribe, is given the honor of

representing Buffalo Woman.

Though she first appeared to the Sioux in human form, White

Buffalo Woman was also a buffalo---the Indians' brother, who gave

its flesh so that the people might live. Albino buffalo were

sacred to all Plains tribes; a white buffalo hide was a sacred

talisman, a possession beyond price.

One summer so long ago that nobody knows how long, the

Oceti-Shakowin, the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota

Oyate, the nation, came together and camped. The sun shone all

the time, but there was no game and the people were starving.

Every day they sent scouts to look for game, but the scouts found

nothing.

Among the bands assembled were the Itazipcho, the Without-Bows,

who had their own camp circle under their chief, Standing Hollow

Horn. Early one morning the chief sent two of his young men to

hunt for game. They went on foot, because at that time the Sioux

didn't yet have horses. They searched everywhere but could find

nothing. Seeing a high hill, they decided to climb it in order to

look over the whole country. Halfway up, they saw something

coming toward them from far off, but the figure was floating

instead of walking. From this they knew that the person was

waken, holy.

At first they could make out only a small moving speck and had to

squint to see that it was a human form. But as it came nearer,

they realized that it was a beautiful young woman, more beautiful

than any they had ever seen, with two round, red dots of face

paint on her cheeks. She wore a wonderful white buckskin outfit,

tanned until it shone a long way in the sun. It was embroidered

with sacred and marvelous designs of porcupine quill, in radiant

colors no ordinary woman could have made. This wakan stranger was

Ptesan-Wi, White Buffalo Woman. In her hands she carried a large

bundle and a fan of sage leaves. She wore her blue-black hair

loose except for a strand at the left side, which was tied up

with buffalo fur. Her eyes shone dark and sparkling, with great

power in them.

The two young men looked at her open-mouthed. One was overawed,

but the other desired her body and stretched his hand out to

touch her. This woman was lila wakan, very sacred, and could not

be treated with disrespect. Lightning instantly struck the brash

young man and burned him up, so that only a small heap of

blackened bones was left. Or as some say that he was suddenly

covered by a cloud, and within it he was eaten up by snakes that

left only his skeleton, just as a man can be eaten up by lust.

To the other scout who had behaved rightly, the White Buffalo

Woman said: "Good things I am brining, something holy to your

nation. A message I carry for your people from the buffalo

nation. Go back to the camp and tell the people to prepare for my

arrival. Tell your chief to put up a medicine lodge with

twenty-four poles. Let it be made holy for my coming."

This young hunter returned to the camp. He told the chief, he

told the people, what the sacred woman had commanded. The chief

told the eyapaha, the crier, and the crier went through the camp

circle calling: "Someone sacred is coming. A holy woman

approaches. Make all things ready for her." So the people put up

the big medicine tipi and waited. After four days they saw the

White Buffalo Woman approaching, carrying her bundle before her.

Her wonderful white buckskin dress shone from afar. The chief,

Standing Hollow Horn, invited her to enter the medicine lodge.

She went in and circled the interior sunwise. The chief addressed

her respectfully, saying: "Sister, we are glad you have come to

instruct us."

She told him what she wanted done. In the center of the tipi they

were to put up an owanka wakan, a sacred altar, made of red

earth, with a buffalo skull and a three-stick rack for a holy

thing she was bringing. They did what she directed, and she

traced a design with her finger on the smoothed earth of the

altar. She show them how to do all this, then circled the lodge

again sunwise. Halting before the chief, she now opened the

bundle. the holy thing it contained was the chanunpa, the sacred

pipe. She held it out to the people and let them look at it. She

was grasping the stem with her right hand and the bowl with her

left, and thus the pipe has been held ever since.

Again the chief spoke, saying: "Sister, we are glad. We have had

no meat for some time. All we can give you is water." They dipped

some wacanga, sweet grass, into a skin bag of water and gave it

to her, and to this day the people dip sweet grass or an eagle

wing in water and sprinkle it on a person to be purified.

The White Buffalo Woman showed the people how to use the pipe.

She filled it with chan-shasha, red willow-bark tobacco. She

walked around the lodge four times after the manner of Anpetu-Wi,

the great sun. This represented the circle without end, the

sacred hoop, the road of life. The woman placed a dry buffalo

chip on the fire and lit the pipe with it. This was

peta-owihankeshini, the fire without end, the flame to be passed

on from generation to generation. She told them that the smoke

rising from the bowl was Tunkashila's breath, the living breath

of the great Grandfather Mystery.

The White Buffalo Woman showed the people the right way to pray,

the right words and the right gestures. She taught them how to

sing the pipe-filling song and how to lift the pipe up to the

sky, toward Grandfather, and down toward Grandmother Earth, to

Unci, and then to the four directions of the universe.

"With this holy pipe," she said, "you will walk like a living

prayer. With your feet resting upon the earth and the pipe stem

reaching into the sky, your body forms a living bridge between

the Sacred Beneath and the Sacred Above. Wakan Tanka smiles upon

us, because now we are as one: earth, sky, all living things, the

two-legged, the four-legged, the winged ones, the trees, the

grasses. Together with the people, they are all related, one

family. The pipe holds them all together."

"Look at this bowl," said the White Buffalo Woman. "Its stone

represents the buffalo, but also the flesh and blood of the red

man. The buffalo represents the universe and the four directions,

because he stands on four legs, for the four ages of man. The

buffalo was put in the west by Wakan Tanka at the making of the

world, to hold back the waters. Every year he loses one hair, and

in every one of the four ages he loses a leg. The Sacred Hoop

will end when all the hair and legs of the great buffalo are

gone, and the water comes back to cover the Earth.

The wooden stem of this chanunpa stands for all that grows on the

earth. Twelve feathers hanging from where the stem- the backbone-

joins the bowl- the skull- are from Wanblee Galeshka, the spotted

eagle, the very sacred who is the Great Spirit's messenger and

the wisest of all cry out to Tunkashila. Look at the bowl:

engraved in it are seven circles of various sizes. They stand for

the seven ceremonies you will practice with this pipe, and for the

Ocheti Shakowin, the seven sacred campfires of our Lakota nation."

The White Buffalo Woman then spoke to the women, telling them

that it was the work of their hands and the fruit of their bodies

which kept the people alive. "You are from the mother earth," she

told them. "What you are doing is as great as what warriors do."

And therefore the sacred pipe is also something that binds men

and women together in a circle of love. It is the one holy object

in the making of which both men and women have a hand. The men

carve the bowl and make the stem; the women decorate it with

bands of colored porcupine quills. When a man takes a wife, they

both hold the pipe at the same time and red cloth is wound around

their hands, thus tying them together for life.

The White Buffalo Woman had many things for her Lakota sisters in

her sacred womb bag; corn, wasna (pemmican), wild turnip. She

taught how to make the hearth fire. She filled a buffalo paunch

with cold water and dropped a red-hot stone into it. "This way you

shall cook the corn and the meat," she told them.

The White Buffalo Woman also talked to the children, because they

have an understanding beyond their years. She told them that     what

their fathers and mothers did was for them, that their parents

could remember being little once, and that they, the children,

would grow up to have little ones of their own. She told them:

"You are the coming generation, that's why you are the most

important and precious ones. Some day you will hold this pipe and

smoke it. Some day you will pray with it."

She spoke once more to all the people: "The pipe is alive; it is

a red being showing you a red life and a red road. And this is

the first ceremony for which you will use the pipe. You will use

it to Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery Spirit. The day a human dies

is always a sacred day. The day when the soul is released to the

Great Spirit is another. Four women will become sacred on such a

day. They will be the ones to cut the sacred tree, the can-wakan,

for the sun dance."

She told the Lakota that they were the purest among the tribes,

and for that reason Tunkashila had bestowed upon them the holy

chanunpa. They had been chosen to take care of it for all the

Indian people on this turtle continent.

She spoke one last time to Standing Hollow Horn, the Chief,

saying, "Remember: this pipe is very sacred. Respect it and it

will take you to the end of the road. The four ages of creation

are in me; I am the four ages. I will come to see you in every

generation cycle. I shall come back to you."

The sacred woman then took leave of the people, saying:

"Toksha ake wacinyanktin ktelo, I shall see you again."

The people saw her walking off in the same direction from which

she had come, outlined against the red ball of the setting sun.

As she went, she stopped and rolled over four times. The first

time, she turned into a black buffalo; the second into a brown

one; the third into a red one; and finally, the fourth time she

rolled over, she turned into a white female buffalo calf. A white

buffalo is the most sacred living thing you could ever encounter.

The White Buffalo Woman disappeared over the Horizon. Sometime

she might come back. As soon as she had vanished, buffalo in

great herds appeared, allowing themselves to be killed so that the

people might survive. And from that day on, our relations, the

buffalo, furnished the people with everything they needed, meat

for their food, skins for their clothes and tipis, bones for

their many tools.

END

Two very old tribal pipes are kept by the Looking Horse family at

Eagle Butte in South Dakota. One of them is the Sacred Pipe

brought to the people by White Buffalo Woman.

~ Toksha ake wacinyanktin ktelo ~