White Buffalo Calf Woman

At a Glance

• Central figures: Pte San Win - White Buffalo Calf Woman, a sacred woman who appeared to the Lakota people; and two young scouts from the Itazipcho (Sans Arc) band of the Lakota.
• Setting: Lakota tradition (Northern Plains); the story takes place during a time of famine on the open prairie, when the buffalo had not come and the people were starving.
• The turn: Two scouts encounter a beautiful woman on the prairie. One approaches her with desire and is destroyed. The other treats her with respect, and she instructs him to prepare the camp for her arrival.
• The outcome: White Buffalo Calf Woman brings the Lakota the chanunpa - the sacred pipe - and teaches them seven sacred rites, then departs, transforming into a white buffalo calf as she walks away across the prairie.
• The legacy: The sacred pipe remains central to Lakota ceremony. The bundle given by White Buffalo Calf Woman was kept by the Looking Horse family among the Minneconjou Lakota for generations.

Two young men from the Itazipcho band were out scouting for game. The camp was hungry. The buffalo had not shown themselves for days, and the people had eaten what they had. The scouts climbed a ridge and looked out over the grass, and what they saw was not a buffalo herd but a single figure walking toward them through the heat shimmer.

She was dressed in white buckskin. She carried something bundled in her arms. As she drew closer the scouts saw she was beautiful - more beautiful than either of them had ever seen. One of the men looked at the other and said he was going to go to her. The second man told him not to. He said she was not an ordinary woman. Something about the way she moved through the tall grass, the way the air around her seemed to settle, told him this.

The Cloud That Covered Him

The first scout did not listen. He walked toward her. He reached out.

A cloud came down over them both - white, thick, rolling over the ground like fog off water. The second scout could not see them. When the cloud lifted, the woman stood as before. At her feet there was nothing left of the first scout but bones and snakes moving through them. The flesh was gone.

She looked at the second young man. She told him not to be afraid. She said she had come with something for his people. She told him to go back to the camp and have the chief prepare a great lodge - a lodge big enough for all the people. She said to set it up in the center of the camp circle, and to make ready for her coming.

The young man ran.

The Lodge in the Center

He reached the camp and told the chief, whose name is given in some tellings as Standing Hollow Horn. The chief listened. He did not question what the scout said. He ordered the people to break down the smaller lodges and put up one large lodge in the center of the camp circle, open to the direction from which she would come. The people worked quickly. They swept the ground inside the lodge. They laid sage upon the earth.

The next morning, the woman came walking out of the sunrise. The people saw her from a distance, white against the yellow grass, and they waited.

The Gift of the Chanunpa

She walked into the camp and into the lodge. She carried the bundle in both hands, holding it the way one holds something that cannot be set down carelessly. She stood before the people and unwrapped it.

Inside was the chanunpa - the sacred pipe. The bowl was of red stone, carved to represent the buffalo calf. The stem was of wood. She held the stem in her right hand and the bowl in her left, and she told the people what the pipe was.

She said: with this pipe you will send your prayers to Wakan Tanka. The smoke that rises is your breath made visible. It carries what you say upward. When you fill the bowl with chanshasha - the red willow bark tobacco - you place in it everything you are offering. When you pray with this pipe, you pray with the earth, with everything that grows and walks and flies.

She showed them how to fill it. She showed them how to hold it. She showed them the direction each pinch of tobacco honored - the four directions, the sky, the earth.

Then she taught them. She gave them seven sacred rites. She told them how to use the pipe in each one. She told them the rite of the sweat lodge, the inipi, for purification. She told them the rite of crying for a vision - the hanbleceya - where a person goes alone onto a hill and prays for days without food or water until a vision comes. She told them the rite of the sun dance, the wiwanyag wacipi, the most difficult of all. She told them the rite of keeping a soul, and the rite of making relatives, and the rite of the throwing of the ball, and the rite of a girl’s coming of age. Seven rites for the people to live by.

She spoke to the women separately. She told them that the work of their hands - the tanning of hides, the making of clothes, the raising of the tipi - was as sacred as the men’s work. She said: the red line from the bowl of the pipe to the stem is the road the people walk. It is a living road.

The White Calf on the Ridge

When she had finished teaching, she told the people she would leave. She said that in time she would return. She walked out of the lodge and through the camp circle, and the people followed her with their eyes. She walked toward the ridge where the two scouts had first seen her.

As she walked she stopped, and when she rose she was a black buffalo. She walked farther and stopped again, and she was a brown buffalo. She went on and stopped, and she was a red buffalo. Then she walked to the top of the ridge and stopped a final time. When she turned she was a white buffalo calf, young and small against the wide sky. She stood there a moment. Then she was gone over the ridge, and the ground where she had walked was full of buffalo. The herds came back. The people ate.

The Pipe Remains

The chanunpa she brought did not leave with her. It stayed with the people. The bundle was kept, and the keeping of it was a responsibility passed through the generations. Among the Minneconjou Lakota, the Looking Horse family carried that responsibility. The pipe bundle is said to exist still.

When a white buffalo calf is born on the plains - and they are born, rarely - the Lakota take notice. The birth of such an animal is not an ordinary event. It is a sign that she is watching, that she has not forgotten the people, and that the road the pipe marks is still a living one.