The White Buffalo Calf Woman
One summer so long ago that nobody knows
how long, the OcetiShakowin, 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 WithoutBows, 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 PtesanWi, White
Buffalo Woman. In her hands she carried
a large bundle and a fan of sage leaves.
She wore her blueblack 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
openmouthed. One was overawed, but the
other desired her body and stretched his
hand out to touch her. This woman was
lila waken, 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 bringing, 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
twentyfour 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
threestick 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 showed 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 chanshasha, red willowbark
tobacco. She walked around the lodge
four times after the manner of
AnpetuWi, 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
petaowihankeshini , 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 pipefilling 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
pipestem 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 fourlegged,
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 redhot
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
canwakan, 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
wacinyanitin 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 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.
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