White Buffalo Calf Woman

"The White Buffalo Calf Woman"

The Sioux are a warroir tribe, and one of their proverbs says,
"Woman shall not walk before man". Yet
White Buffalo Calf Woman
is the dominant figure of their most importnant 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 respresenting
Buffalo Woman.
Though she first appeared to the Sioux in human form,
White Buffalo Calf 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-Sakowin, the seven sacrd councel fires of
the Lokota Oyate, the nation, came together and camped.
The sun shone all the time, but there was no game and
the people were starving. Everyday they sent scouts to
look for game, but the scouts found nothing.
Among the bands assembled were the Itazipcho, the Withoout-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.
Half way 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 as 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 marvellous designs of porcupine quill,
in radiant colors no ordinary woman could have made.
This Waken stranger was Ptesan-Wi, White Buffalo Calf 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 ower in them.
The two young men looked at her open-mouthed.
One was over awed, but the other desied her body and
stretched his hand out to touch her. This woman was Lila
Wakan, very sacred, and could not be treated with disprspect.
Lightning instantly struckthe brash young man and burnt him up,
so that only a small heap of blackened bones was left.
Or some say that he was suddenly covered by a cloud,
and within it he was eaten 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 peolpe 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 comanded.
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,
carring 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 and owanka wakan, a sacred altar,
make 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 cantained was the chananpa, the
scared pipe. She held it up 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 dropped some wacanga, sweet grass, into a skin bag
of water and gave it to her, and to this day the people
dip sweet gras or an eagle wing in water and spinkle 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
tabacco. 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 buffaol chip on the fire and lit
the pipe with it, This 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 directons
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 berween the Sacred Beneath and
the Sacred Above. Waken 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 realted, one family. The pipe holds them all together."
"Look upon 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 and in every one of
the four ages he loses a leg. The Scared 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 woden stem of this chanun[a stands for all that
grows on the earth. Twelve feathers hanging from
where the sem-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 toTunkashila.
Look at the bowl: engraved in it are seven circles,
of various sizes. They stand for the seven ceremonies
you will pratice with this pipe, and for the Ocheti Shakowin,
the seven sacred campfires of our Lakots nation."
The Buffalo Woman then spoke to the woman,
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 doin is as great as what warrios do."
And therefore the sacred pipe is also something
that binds men and woman together in a circle of love.
It is the one holy object in the making of wich 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
Lokota 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 droped a red-hot stone into it, "This is the way you
should cook the corn and meat," she told them.
The White Buffalo Woman also talked to the childern,
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 childern, 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. Someday you will hold
this pipe and smoke it. Someday 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 woman will become sacred on such a day.
They will be the one to cut the sacrd tree, the can-waken,
for the sun dance."
She told the Lakota they were the purest amoung
the tribes, and for that reason Tunkashila had bestowed
upon the the holy chanunpa. They had been chosen to
take of it for all the Indian people on this turtle continent,
She spoke one last time to Sanding Hollow Horn, the chief saying, "Remember:
this pipe is very scared.
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 ags. I will come back and see you."
The Sacred Woman the took leave of the people, saying:
" Toksha ake wacinyanktin ktelo, I shall see you again."
The poeple saw her waking 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 roller of four times.
The first time, she turned into a black buffalo;
the second time into a brown one; the third time
a red one; and finally, the fourth time she rolled over,
she turned inot a white female buffalo calf, A white buffalo is the most sacred living thing
you could ever encounter.
The White Buffalo Woman disappeared pver the horizon.
Sometime she might come back. As soon as she had vanished,
buffalo in gret herds appeared, allowing themselves to
be killed so that the poeople 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.

The End.
as told by: Tankasila

Gifts I have recieved