Lakota Vision: White Buffalo Calf Woman and World Harmony

[White Buffalo Calf Woman, your Twin Deer Mother]

Lakota Vision: White Buffalo Calf Woman and World Harmony

BY 

JACK EIDT

 – POSTED ON JULY 9, 2011POSTED IN: MYTH, RITUALS AND TRADITIONS

The supernatural appearance of White Buffalo Calf Woman tells of her divine revelations to the Lakota people regarding the Seven Sacred Rites to bring about spiritual rebirth and world harmony.

White Buffalo Calf Woman told them seven circles carved on the stone represented seven rites in which the people would learn to use the sacred pipe. The first was for the rite of “keeping the soul.” “It should be for you a sacred day when one of your people dies. You must then keep his soul. So long as in his soul, the person is kept with the people, through him you will send your voice to Wakan Tanka.”

Lakota Legend: White Buffalo Calf Woman (Ptesan-Wi)

In the days before the Lakota had horses on which to hunt the buffalo, food was often scarce. One summer when the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Oyate (Nation) had camped together, there was very little to eat. Two young men of the Itazipcho band – the ‘Without-Bows’ – decided they would rise early and look for game. They left camp with dogs still yawning, setting out across the plain, accompanied by the song of the yellow meadowlark.

After a while the day began to grow warm. Crickets chirruped in the waving grass, prairie dogs darted their holes as the hunters approached, but still spotted no real game. So the young men made towards a little hill to see further across the vast expanse of level prairie. Reaching it, they shielded their eyes and scanned the distance, but beheld coming out of the growing heat haze something bright, walking on two legs, not four. Soon they recognized her as a beautiful woman in shining white buckskin.

Interview with Bill Means of the American Indian Movement about the Lakota legend of the White Buffalo Calf Woman

Coming closer, they noticed her buckskin wonderfully decorated with sacred designs in rainbow-colored porcupine quills. She carried a bundle on her back, and a fan of fragrant sage leaves in her hand. Her jet-black hair was loose, except for a single strand tied with buffalo fur. Eyes full of light and power, she transfixed the young men.

Now one of the men filled with burning desire. “What a woman!” he said sideways to his friend. “And all alone on the prairie. I’m going to make the most of this!”

“You fool,” said the other. “This woman is holy.”

But the foolish one made up his mind, and when the woman beckoned, he needed no second invitation. Reaching out for her, a great cloud enveloped them both. When it lifted, the woman stood, and at her feet remained nothing but a pile of bones with terrible snakes writhing among them.

“Behold,” said the woman to the good hunter in Lakota, so he thought her one of his tribe and approached. When he saw his dead friend’s remains, he menaced her with his bow but she proclaimed, “I am Wakan (holy) and your weapons cannot hurt me.  Do as I say and you will not regret it.” He relented and she continued, “I come to your people with a message from Tatanka Oyate, the Buffalo Nation. Return to Chief Hehlokecha Najin (Standing Hollow Horn) and tell him what you have seen. Tell him to prepare a tipi large enough for all his people, and to get ready for my coming.”

Wakan Woman Appears Again

The young man ran back across the prairie, gasping for breath as he reached camp. With a small crowd of people already following, he found Standing Hollow Horn and related the story that the sacred woman was coming. The chief ordered several tipis to be combined into one big enough for his band. The people waited with anticipation for the wakan woman to arrive.

After four days the scouts posted to watch for the holy woman saw something coming towards them in a beautiful manner from across the prairie. Then suddenly the woman appeared in the great lodge, walking round it in a sunwise direction. The chief addressed her respectfully, saying: “Sister, we are glad you have come to instruct us.”

Divine Revelations

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 bundle she brought. They did as 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. She stopped before Standing Hollow Horn as he sat in the west of the lodge, and held her bundle before him in both hands.

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.

“Look on this,” she said about her bundle, “and always love and respect it. It is very sacred. No one who is impure should ever touch this, for it contains the chanunpa, the sacred pipe.” She unrolled the skin bundle and took out a pipe, and a small round stone which she put down on the ground. She presented it to the people and let them look. She grasped the stem with right hand and the bowl with her left, and thus the pipe has been held ever since.

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-owihankeshni, 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. “With this you will, during winters to come, send your voices to Wakan Tanka, your Father and Grandfather.”

She showed the people the right way to pray, words and gestures. She taught them how to sing the pipe-filling song and how to lift the pipe to the sky, toward Grandfather, and down toward Grandmother Earth, to Unci, and then to the four directions of the universe. “With this pipe you will walk on the Earth, which is your Grandmother and Mother. The Earth is sacred, and so is every step that you take on her. The bowl of the pipe is of red stone; it is the earth. With your feet resting upon the earth and 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.

“Carved into the pipe and facing the center is the buffalo calf, who stands for all the four-leggeds who live upon your Mother. The buffalo represents the universe and the four directions, because he stands on four legs, for the four ages of creation. 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 Mother Earth.

“The stem is of wood, which stands for all that grows on the Earth. These twelve hanging feathers from Wanblee Galeshka (Spotted Eagle) stand for all the winged creatures. All these living things of the universe are the children of Mother Earth. You are all joined as one family, and you will be reminded of this when you smoke the pipe. Treat this pipe and the earth with respect, and your people will increase and prosper.”

The woman told them that seven circles carved on the stone represented the seven rites in which the people would learn to use the sacred pipe. The first was for the rite of “keeping the soul”, which she now taught them. “It should be for you a sacred day when one of your people dies. You must then keep his soul as I shall teach you, and through this you will gain much power; for if the soul is kept, it will increase in you your concern and love for your neighbor. So long as the person, in his soul, is kept with the people, through him you will be able to send your voice to Wakan Tanka.”

The remaining rites they would learn in due course.

The woman made as if to leave the lodge, but then turned, speaking to Standing Hollow Horn again. “This pipe will carry you to the end. Remember that in me there are four ages. I am going now, but I will look on your people in every age, and at the end I will return.”

White Buffalo Calf

She now circumambulated slowly around the lodge in a sunwise direction. The people were silent and awed. Even the hungry young children watched, their eyes alive with wonder. Then she left.

After she had walked a short distance, she faced the people again and sat down on the prairie. The people gazing after her with amazement witnessed her transforming into a young red and brown buffalo calf…then rolled over and became a yellow buffalo calf….then rolled again into a black one. She continued further into the prairie, and then lay down and rolled over one more time, looking back at the people.

Standing, she appeared as a white buffalo. She walked on until only visible as a bright speck in the distant prairie. She kept moving, stopping to bow to the four directions of the earth, and finally disappeared over the hill.

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 need — meat for their food, skins for their clothes and tipis, and bones for their many tools. Until, of course, the herds no longer sustained the people…but that is another story.

Mitakuye Oyasin, We are all related.

Sources:

Living Myths

LAKOTA – To Walk the Red Road

Updated 9 February 2019

https://www.wilderutopia.com/traditions/lakota-vision-world-harmony-white-buffalo-calf-woman/

[White Buffalo Calf Woman, your Twin Deer Mother]

White Buffalo Calf Woman

The story of White Buffalo Calf Woman

"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".(Chasing Horse)


Long ago the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Nation came together and camped. There was no game and the people were starving and every day they sent out scouts and every day they came back with nothing.
One day a chief sent out two hunters to find some game. They climbed up a high hill to try to see far, off in the distance they saw something coming near them. As the figure came closer it seemed to be floating toward them and covered in beautiful white robes.
Soon they saw the figure was a beautiful young woman in white buckskin carrying a bundle.
Both men watched in awe as she approached them, one young man was filled with desire and had impure thoughts about her; he suddenly was covered in a cloud and turned to dust. The other man knew she was very sacred and respected her and she said to him; "good things I am bringing to your people, go back and tell them to prepare for me and I will return in four days"
The man returned to the people telling of the sacred woman and how they needed to prepare for her return and so they did.
Four days later she came to the camp with a bundle, which carried a sacred pipe. She instructed them on the teachings of the pipe and how to use it for it would take care of the people. With the chanupa wakan (sacred pipe) also come seven sacred ceremonies to  keep the sacred hoop united and the buffalo nation would feed the people.
She instructed the people on many teachings of how to pray and how to live in a good way.
As she got up to leave she told the people that she would return again and as she got further in the distance she rolled on the ground and came up a black buffalo, she then rolled again and came up a brown buffalo, next a red buffalo and finally the fourth time she turned into a white buffalo calf.
As soon as she disappeared into the distance herds of buffalo appeared to offer themselves to the people so they would live, and from that day forward the great buffalo gave the people everything they needed to survive.

http://whitebuffalonaturals.blogspot.com/2011/03/white-buffalo-calf-woman.html

[White Buffalo Calf Woman, your Twin Deer Mother]

$18,500 to kill Sacred White Buffalo in Texas outrages Native Americans

Valon Latifi April 21, 2017 

Native Americans have always had many legends that span over thousands of years. Yet despite the many legends, the most sacred one involves the birth of a White Buffalo calf.

There are countless stories about the White Buffalo, with a slightly different tale being told for every tribe. But the message is clear in all of them; The Native Americans see the white buffalo calf as a sign to begin mending life’s sacred hoop, to connect with each another and with our Mother Earth whom we must stop destroying. The White Buffalo is a very sacred sign and symbol to the Native Americans.

It may be that not all white buffaloes are created equal, for there is a herd in Bend, Oregon, that contains 11 white buffaloes. Even so, it’s safe to say there aren’t a lot of them; an article on the herd from 2010 said that experts estimate that there are less than 50 white buffaloes in existence. Native Americans are taking this as a sign that something profound is happening to our planet as well as to humanity.

The sacredness of the white buffalo is linked to the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman, a Lakota prophet who brought the Lakota the Seven Sacred Rituals.

Esteemed Lakota spiritual leader John Lame Deer called the white buffalo “the most sacred living thing you could ever encounter.” Oglala Sioux spiritual leader Floyd Looks for Buffalo Hand, a grandson of Red Cloud, is quoted as saying “The arrival of the white buffalo is like the second coming of Christ. … It will bring about purity of mind, body, and spirit and unify all nations—black, red, yellow, and white.”

Understanding just how important the white buffalo is then, it becomes extremely hideous and despicable that a canned hunting outfit in Texas called the Texas Hunt Lodge is now offering the chance to kill these majestic and spiritually significant creatures. For $18,500, a person can go there and do exactly that.

These are canned hunts which means the animal has no chance for escape and is in an enclosed area that makes it extremely easy to kill them. They are also usually very used to the presence of humans so they do not have the fear of man as would a wild bison. The White Buffalo has a very spiritual significance to the Native American culture.

http://theinterviewdaily.blogspot.com/2017/04/18500-to-kill-sacred-white-buffalo-in_21.html

[White Buffalo Calf Woman, your Twin Deer Mother]

WHITE BUFFALO FULFILLS A TRIBAL PROPHECY

Richard Wronski, Tribune Staff WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

 

As Floyd Hand tells it, "a beautiful lady in a rainbow-colored dress" appeared to him in a vivid dream last May and said she soon would bring a message of peace and unity to mankind.

That dream, the 55-year-old Lakota Sioux medicine man says, echoed a vision that a tribal elder experienced 60 years earlier.

Hand and other Native Americans believe the dream became reality last month with the birth of a female white buffalo, a sacred and apocalyptic symbol in Indian culture, on a modest farm in southern Wisconsin.

Since then, hundreds of Native Americans and others have flocked to Dave and Valerie Heider's 46-acre spread along the Rock River to glimpse the white buffalo. The Heiders have named the calf Miracle.

"In North American Indian country, we've been anticipating her coming since 1933-34," Hand said in a telephone interview last week.

"The second coming of Christ is like this; that is what is happening."

Hand, whose Indian name is Looks for Buffalo, and a delegation of Lakota Sioux plan to make a pilgrimage this week from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to Janesville, where they will "welcome the sacred spirit" of White Buffalo Calf Woman.

According to Lakota Sioux legend, "one summer so long ago that nobody knows how long" a beautiful young woman appeared among the Indians at a time when there was no game and people were starving.

The woman gave the people a sacred pipe, taught them how to use it to pray and told the Sioux about the value of the buffalo. Before she left them, the woman said one day she would return, the legend says.

As she walked away, she turned into a young white buffalo.

Hand said the return of White Buffalo Calf Woman marks the arrival of a new era of reconciliation among races and respect for the Earth.

"We're going to pray for the healing of nations. We're going to pray for the healing of the Earth," Hand said. "And we're going to be one heart, one mind and one spirit, and unify the four sacred colors (races) so that we can unify as one family and stand up for peace."

Since Miracle was born Aug. 20, the Heiders' lives haven't been the same.

"I knew that it was unusual and rare and that it meant something to the Indians, but I had no idea of the significance," said Heider, 46, a truck driver for the Rock County Highway Department who started breeding buffalo four years ago. "This is really fantastic to the Indians. They've been predicting this white calf coming for a long time."

Heider said that once word of the white calf's birth circulated, his phone started ringing. "I was contacted by numerous Indian tribes and they questioned me about the calf and asked me if it was male or female," he said.

Then the curious and the faithful started arriving. On Labor Day alone, the Heiders counted 235 visitors. A guest book is filled with hundreds of names, most of them from Indian tribes in the Midwest, but others from as far away as Ireland, Japan and the Netherlands.

TV crews have descended on the farm to film the calf, which nurses from her 900-pound mother.

Indian visitors have performed rituals and hung ceremonial objects such as a dream catcher and a medicine wheel from a fence and a tree near where the Heiders' 13 buffalo graze.

Heider says he has no plans to sell Miracle, even though he has had offers, including one for "a substantial amount."

One inquiry, he said, came from rock star Ted Nugent, a proponent of bow hunting who recorded the song "Great White Buffalo" in the 1970s.

The Heiders acknowledge the need to cut back on visiting time, and say insurance and security have become a concern. An electrified fence surrounds the herd, and the couple is considering installing alarms and other security measures.

A trust fund to handle donations for expenses was set up at a local bank.

"I was asked by one of the first Indians that was here not to make this into a circus with this white calf and we don't plan to," Heider said. "As long as we don't have any problems we're going to keep it so the people can come in and see her, because she's a piece of history."

The issue of Miracle's pedigree has been raised. Heider says the American Bison Association, which maintains a registry, wants to do a blood test to determine the presence of any domestic cow lines.

Heider is willing to do this, but only after Miracle is weaned in six or seven months.

Miracle is not an albino-an animal without any pigment-and the Heiders concede that the calf's color may darken as she loses her coat, a point that doesn't seem to concern Native Americans.

"They have been here and looked at it, and if they thought it was a crossbreed they wouldn't still be coming here to pay homage to it," he said.

Authenticity is not a question, agrees Paul DeMain, managing editor of the News from Indian Country, a newspaper published on the Lac Courte Oreilles Chippewa reservation in Wisconsin.

"We don't need to wait for the genetic tests and all that," he said.

"And even if the calf turns color later on, it's what's going on right now that's significant-that there has been a white buffalo calf born."

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-09-11-9409110217-story.html

[White Buffalo Calf Woman, your Twin Deer Mother]

White Buffalo Calf Woman: Create Peace

White Buffalo Calf Women is a Native American spirit woman considered a holy woman-savior who came here to give instructions for living the sacred life to “The People.”  In Native American Culture, she is credited with helping the Lakota and Sioux establish rituals and a sacred social life that would bring them closer to Great Spirit, the Great Mother and one another, as well teaching them how to perpetuate peace and honesty in their world.

Special qualities:  Activating your ability to build peaceful community and spread peace.

Evoke her:  Focus on peace, every day.  Take a “peace break” in lieu of a coffee break, and softly or silently chant: Peace to my right. Peace to my left. Peace in front of me. Peace in back of me. Peace above me. Peace below me. Peace within me. Peace all about. Peace abounds. Peace is mine.

Affirmation: “I radiate peace everywhere I go.”

Read more at https://www.beliefnet.com/wellness/2010/01/meet-the-goddesses.aspx?p=9#qPtEZJgBTeWv018S.99

[White Buffalo Calf Woman, your Twin Deer Mother]

By Julie Martineau Des Moines County Historical Society

Posted Nov 25, 2018 at 1:01 AM

  

The proper name for this week’s artifact is actually ”čhaŋnúŋpa” (pronounced chanunpah, which means “sacred pipe” in Lakota. A more common spelling is “canunpa.” Such pipes are highly personal, and have great spiritual significance to the Native peoples who use them.

Hand carved sometime in the mid to late 1800s, the artifact is crafted from a soft form of metamorphic mudstone called Catlinite, also known as Pipestone. The name Catlinite first came into use after the painter, George Catlin, visited the stone quarries in 1835. George Catlin recorded a legend about the origin of using Catlinite to make pipes, where the Great Spirit told the tribes that this stone must only be used to make pipes.

Catlinite is mined at the Pipestone National Monument, and can only be mined by enrolled members of a federally recognized tribe.

The original owner of this pipe was a man; the shape of the pipe itself is one that is exclusively used by men. Women’s pipes have a shorter nose and bowl. Both would be used with a long, hollow wooden stem that was often decorated with bands of quillwork or beadwork, and golden eagle feathers. They would be stored in specially constructed bags that were designed to hold a pipe head, stem and accessories.

The pipe would be used as the root of all ceremonies conducted by the owner. It would also be offered to guests as a gesture of good will and honesty between them, hence the misnomer, “peace pipe.” Contrary to popular belief, illicit, mind altering substances were never used in the pipe ceremony. Common ingredients for the mix were wild tobacco, bearberry leaves, and ‘red willow’ (red osier dogwood).

Legend holds that the original pipe was given to the Lakota people by Pte Skawin, or the White Buffalo Calf Woman, who then taught the people to pray with it, and to use it when performing a ceremony. The original White Buffalo Calf pipe is still with the original family that it was given to, with Arvol Looking Horse as the Seventh generation Pipe Carrier.

The artifact was collected from the Lakota people sometime in the mid to late 1800s, and later donated to the Des Moines County Historical Society by the Mrs. Hazel F. McAnally estate.

“Out of the Attic” features artifacts from the collection of the Des Moines County Historical Society. For more information, to ask questions or to offer comments or suggestions, call (319) 752-7449 or email dm...@dmchs.org.

https://www.thehawkeye.com/entertainmentlife/20181125/out-of-attic-pipe-was-root-of-tribal-ceremonies