The sacred pipe

At a Glance

• Central figures: Pte San Win - White Buffalo Calf Woman - a sacred being who appeared to the Lakota people, and two young hunters of the Itazipcho (Sans Arc) band.
• Setting: Lakota tradition (Northern Plains); the story takes place on the open prairie near the Mni Sose (Missouri River) during a time of famine, when the buffalo had disappeared and the people were starving.
• The turn: White Buffalo Calf Woman arrives carrying the chanunpa - the sacred pipe - and teaches the Lakota seven sacred rites, binding the people to the buffalo, the earth, and Wakan Tanka.
• The outcome: The buffalo return. The Lakota receive a way of prayer and right relationship that sustains them. One of the two hunters who first saw her is destroyed for approaching her with wrong intent.
• The legacy: The chanunpa wakan - the original sacred pipe - remains in the keeping of the Looking Horse family on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota and is cared for by the Keeper of the Sacred Pipe to this day.

Two young men of the Itazipcho band were hunting on the open prairie. The camp was hungry. The buffalo had gone and the scouts kept coming back with nothing - no tracks, no dust on the horizon, no sign. These two had gone out far from the circle of lodges, farther than they should have, looking for anything.

They saw something moving toward them across the grass. At first it looked like a piece of light shifting in the heat. Then it took shape. A woman was walking toward them, alone, carrying something bundled in her arms. She wore white buckskin. Her hair was long and loose. She moved steadily, as if she had been walking a long time and would walk much farther.

The Two Hunters

One of the men looked at her and wanted her. He said so to his companion. The other one said: look at her. She is not ordinary. She is wakan - sacred. Do not think that way.

The first man did not listen. He stepped forward. A cloud came down over him, a thin mist that wrapped around his body and then lifted. Where he had stood there was nothing left but bones on the grass, and snakes moving through them.

The second hunter stood still. He did not run. The woman spoke to him. She said: go back to your people. Tell the chief to prepare a large lodge. Set it up in the center of the camp. I am coming, and I am bringing something that the people will need.

He went back. He told the chief, whose name was Standing Hollow Horn. The chief did what the woman asked. The people put up the largest tipi they had, and they swept the ground inside it, and they waited.

The Arrival

She came into the camp the next morning, walking from the west. The people lined both sides of the path. She walked between them without hurrying. The bundle was still in her arms. She entered the lodge where Standing Hollow Horn and the elders sat.

She unwrapped the bundle. Inside was a pipe - the stem and the bowl carried separately. The stem was wood, and the bowl was red catlinite stone carved in the shape of a buffalo calf. She held them up so everyone could see.

She fitted the stem to the bowl. She said: this is the chanunpa wakan. With this pipe you will send your voices to Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery. The smoke that rises is your breath made visible. It carries your prayers upward.

She held the pipe with the stem pointing to the sky and turned it in a circle, touching it to the four directions. She said: the pipe holds everything together. The bowl is the earth. The buffalo carved on it represents all four-legged creatures. The stem is all that grows on the earth. The twelve feathers hanging from it are from the spotted eagle, and they stand for all the winged ones. When you join the bowl and the stem, you connect everything. When you smoke, the whole world prays with you.

The Seven Rites

She taught them how to hold the pipe. She showed them how to fill it with chanshasha - red willow bark tobacco. She told them what words to say.

Then she gave them the outline of seven sacred ceremonies. She described each one, and said that they would come to understand them more fully in time. Among them were the Inipi - the purification lodge - and the Hanbleceya - crying for a vision. She spoke of the Wiwanyag Wachipi - the Sun Dance - and the Hunkapi - the making of relatives. She told them of the Isnati Awicalowanpi - a young woman’s coming-of-age rite - and the Tapa Wanka Yap - the throwing of the ball. And she named the keeping of the soul, the rite for the dead.

She said: as long as the people keep the pipe and perform these rites, the Lakota will live. The buffalo will return to you. The people will not be lost.

She spoke mostly to the women. She told them: you are the ones from whom everything comes. The pipe is your responsibility as much as any man’s. Remember that.

The White Buffalo Calf

When she had finished teaching, she stood and walked out of the lodge. The people followed her to the edge of the camp. She walked out onto the prairie. After a few steps, she stopped and sat down. When she rose, she had become a young red-brown buffalo calf. The calf walked farther, lay down, and stood again as a white buffalo calf. It walked on. It lay down once more and rose as a black buffalo. Then the black buffalo bowed to the four directions and walked over a ridge and was gone.

Almost immediately, a great herd of buffalo appeared on the prairie. The people had food again. The famine was over.

The Pipe Keeper

Standing Hollow Horn received the pipe. He became its first keeper. The chanunpa wakan passed from keeper to keeper through the generations, always cared for, always wrapped, always treated as a living thing.

The pipe did not stay with the Sans Arc. It moved to the Miniconjou and eventually came into the care of the Looking Horse family at Green Grass on the Cheyenne River Reservation. Arvol Looking Horse serves as the nineteenth Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe. He carries it wrapped. It is not unwrapped casually or displayed. It is kept because she said to keep it, and the Lakota keep their word.

The pipe binds the bowl to the stem, the earth to the sky, the two-legged to the four-legged. The buffalo still come back. They came back as recently as the herds at Wind Cave and Custer State Park, on land the Lakota know by older names. The pipe is still wrapped in its bundle at Green Grass. The keeper still watches over it. The smoke still rises.