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Lakota Lore A Compendium of Thoughts and Knowledge of the Dakota Nation
De Mark Lewing
Actions du livre
Commencer à lireLongueur: 255 pages3 heures
- Éditeur:
- Mark Lewing
- Sortie:
- Apr 6, 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781386308997
- Format:
- Livre
Description
Lakota Lore is a compendium of my thoughts and current and past knowledge of the historic and cultural heritage of the Dakota Sioux Nation. It is primarily focused on the larger Lakota branch of the nation due to the fact that a large part of my family possesses Oglala Lakota lineage. Their lack of interest and knowledge precipitated my desire to acquaint them with their rich heritage. This book is aimed at providing a guideline for them and anyone interested or with similar heritage to find out what that heritage entails. It draws on a very large volume of information that has been passed down and documented since the Dakota Nation is one of the most studied Native American cultures whose people are among the strongest in retaining language, traditions and heritage.
Informations sur le livre
Lakota Lore A Compendium of Thoughts and Knowledge of the Dakota Nation
De Mark Lewing
Longueur: 255 pages3 heures
Description
Lakota Lore is a compendium of my thoughts and current and past knowledge of the historic and cultural heritage of the Dakota Sioux Nation. It is primarily focused on the larger Lakota branch of the nation due to the fact that a large part of my family possesses Oglala Lakota lineage. Their lack of interest and knowledge precipitated my desire to acquaint them with their rich heritage. This book is aimed at providing a guideline for them and anyone interested or with similar heritage to find out what that heritage entails. It draws on a very large volume of information that has been passed down and documented since the Dakota Nation is one of the most studied Native American cultures whose people are among the strongest in retaining language, traditions and heritage.
- Éditeur:
- Mark Lewing
- Sortie:
- Apr 6, 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781386308997
- Format:
- Livre
À propos de l'auteur
En rapport avec Lakota Lore A Compendium of Thoughts and Knowledge of the Dakota Nation
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Lakota Lore A Compendium of Thoughts and Knowledge of the Dakota Nation - Mark Lewing
LORE
DEDICATION
For Alyce, my late wife, who introduced Lakota lineage into our family by marrying me and becoming the mother of Alyssa and John.
For Dan, my humorous ex-roustabout son-in-law, and for Alyssa, my daughter who went and married him.
For Racheal, my beautiful Indian princess daughter-in-law, and for
John, my son who went and married her.
For Lindsey, my horse person daughter who kept the dream alive with her close relationship with Native American elementary classmate Kenadon.
For Chad, Corey, and Nicholas, my three strong sons who encouraged me right along and who contributed many grandchildren to our family.
AND
For Pamela, my loving wife, who, with Native American heritage of her own, never stopped pushing me to write this book.
AND
For Trever, in loving memory of my youngest son who crossed over in 2015; he taught us it was okay to cry.
AND FINALLY
For all my grandchildren and great grandchildren, too numerous and still accumulating to mention by name here, who were, after all, my original inspiration.
LAKOTA LORE
A Compendium of Thoughts and Knowledge
of the Dakota Nation
MARK LEWING
––––––––
Copyright © 2017 by Mark Lewing
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
––––––––
Edited by Paul Lewing
Illustrations by Paul Lewing, Lindsey Parker & Krysta Mertins
Photographs by Author
First Edition
Manufactured in the United States of America
————————
Front cover: Harney Peak in the Black Hills at bottom, Bear Butte near Sturgis, S.D. at top, Lakota Thunderbird at center. Back cover: Racetrack near Buffalo Gap, S.D. at bottom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I never thought I‘d write a book. The stirrings in my mind for this one actually began sometime ago while I was still working for a living. It may even have begun as early as 1969 when I married my late wife, Alyce, who was 1/8th Oglala Lakota according to several of her Craig family siblings including sister Diana Peterson and brother, Gerry. Her oldest sister, Jean Boyer, related to me the story of their ancestry which revolved around several Danish families, the Lashers, Cordinglys, Greggs, Tewksburys to name a few, living around Spirit Lake, Iowa around the turn of the century. Nearby also lived a band of Oglalas possibly visiting their Mdewaktunwan Dakota relatives who were known to have lived there. Two girls were kidnapped and later recovered, pregnant, in the Black Hills. One committed suicide but the other bore a girl, Alyce’s grandmother on her mother’s (Lasher’s) side of the family.
When Jean was in grade school in the forties, this story was retold in her elementary history book but, unfortunately, school officials in power later had all of the books burned because of that and similar stories. Alyce lived with her grandparents for a while as a child and used to relate stories such as how grandpa would say, if grandma ever fell in the river, look for her upstream because she was too feisty or cantankerous to go down.
Later, stationed by the Air Force in Grand Forks, North Dakota, our daughter, Alyssa, met and married the love of her life, Dan Mathis. Dan has Lakota ancestry too and together they are raising six wonderful girls and their very recently newborn son. That is the main impetus that stirred my resolve to write this book. Then our son John met and married Racheal, who is also of Lakota ancestry, which enhanced the resolve further. They have two boys now. Finally, second grade daughter Lindsey began a close friendship with Kenadon Owens, a Chippewa native of North Dakota, which has endured to this day even though he has long since moved back east. At one time I felt chances of acquiring a third Native American in-law were good.
Since I began the writing process several years ago, many people have cropped up that I must also acknowledge. Over a period of eighteen months or so I wrote, rewrote, added to, edited and more or less completed the manuscript but had tentatively decided to let it stand as a within family effort when Ms Georgiann Talbot Banks stepped into my life with her giant Colorado blue spruce trees. I nominated two of them to the Montana Big Tree Register and in the process she showed me her multivolume family history that she published herself. Her encouragement resulted in my revised decision to publish this book.
My brothers Paul and Neal, both published authors, stepped up to the plate very strongly in this production. Neal gave me lots of encouragement, example and information on how to go about this unfamiliar task. Paul did the same but went on to edit and partially illustrate the book for me as well. Their contributions made it happen.
My daughter, Lindsey Parker, provided the rest of the illustrations assisted by granddaughters Krysta Mertins and Shailyn Scheffer. As you can see, Lindsey’s specialty is horses. She wanted to include them in her mythological illustration at the head of that chapter and perhaps Crazy Horse astride his crazy dream horse racing ahead of the Wakinyan and Eya, the West Wind, as in his personal vision would have been appropriate, but I talked her out of it. Or you can still check out the dream horses on her Sacred Hoop of Life and at the bottom of the mythology chapter.
Angela Rowe, affiliated with Lone Rock School, enthusiastically taught me how to conquer the world of computereze and design/create the first cover for this book. Angela also put me in contact with Jonathan Agosto at Lone Rock who borrowed me his copy of Photoshop to install and helped me figure the darn thing out.
Many thanks must go to my longtime forester/author friend, Carl Haywood and wife Linda, who helped me immensely with advice and guidance as well as providing me with an ISBN number for this book all of which saved me time and money. Carl has five books out now and Linda does the graphics for him so she was key to my success in creating the final cover versions. I came up with three different versions of the front cover including one that Linda designed. I appreciate the opinions from a number of my family members on them but granddaughter Libbey ultimately made the difficult decision on which one to use. And to my longtime friend, Dale Burk, owner of Stoneydale Press Publishing Company in Stevensville, for taking the time to read the manuscript, contact some people, put me in contact with people, guide and otherwise encourage my efforts. Long lost family friend Danica Winters and Clare Wood of Self Publishing Services were awesome in getting me online with this book. Publishing also became a reality with the financial help of Paul and Neal as well as those of my children who chipped into a publishing pot for me.
My good friends Ray and Sue Lyons provided encouragement especially in securing my invitation to the annual Friends of the Library author’s fete even before I had published anything. Several people loaned me useful books including Dave Oligee whose uncle recently (2010) published a treatise on the American Indian.
Many thanks go to the Heritage Center Museum in Bismarck, North Dakota, and Kirstin Wood at the Old Post Office Museum in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota for helping me find and photograph some of their artifacts. Likewise, Dixie Thompson, Director, and Dave Baldwin who helped me with my camera, at the St. Joseph’s Indian School Museum in Chamberlain and Lupi Standing Cloud at the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum in St. Francis, South Dakota took time from their busy schedules to help me obtain those photos. And to Cheryl Letcher of the Dinosaur Museum who recovered my camera and did amazing research to find me and return it. I received encouragement from many friends too numerous to mention over the course of this endeavor; please know that, even though you are not mentioned by name, appreciation for your help stands firm.
And finally many heartfelt thanks must go to my wife and partner Pamela who has often pushed me, listened to my bemoaning, given advice and opinions of my often pathetic ideas and otherwise provided encouragement to make this happen. I think she really thought I should write about other things but, hey, it’s a good start.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments iv
List of Photographs viii
Preface ix
The Beginning 1
Mythology 8
Legend 22
White Buffalo Cow Woman 36
Photographs 59
Circles 79
The Family Tree98
Community Life 116
Video 155
Literature 164
Epilogue 174
Bibliography 176
LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS
Wind Cave 1
Buffalo Gap 2
Racetrack at Buffalo Gap (three views) 3,4,5
Racetrack at Sturgis (two views) 6,7
Bear Butte (two views) 8,9
Inyan Kara or Rock Gatherer Mountain 10
Mato Tapila or Devil’s Tower11
Hinhan Kaga Paha or Harney Peak 12
Winter Count Robes (three views) 13,14
Pipes15
Sitting Bull’s Pipe16
Sacred Hoop of Life 17
Thunderbird 17a
Warrior Tipi (two views) 18,19
Lakota Saddle 20
Parfleches21
Dreamcatcher 22
Firebag23
Footwear24
Bows25
War Club26
Dakota Clothing27
One Bull’s Shirt28
Fetterman Battlefield Monument (two views) 29,30
Children’s Clothing & Accessories 31
Warrior Shirt 32
Man’s Clothing & Accessories 33
Elk Hoop Game34
Games (two views) 35,36
Dance Regalia (two views) 37,38
Ghost Dance Shirt and Shield 39,40
LAKOTA LORE
PREFACE
I have always been interested in Native American history. It is a rare day when breakfast and lunch interludes do not include a book on Montana history and/or the earlier natives of America. Since the two of my children who have the most Native American blood coursing through their veins have chosen to wed wild
Indians, I have become even more interested and especially in the Dakota Nation since that is their heritage. As of the beginning of this writing (2007) there appeared to be a lack of interest in the history and culture of their rich heritage. And rich it is. I believe there is more written history revolving around the opening of the American West than any other period of time on the North American continent. Nor can you open a history book without dealing with Native Americans, the Dakota Nation being among the most prominent players. Not only that, but their culture appears to be among the most highly developed and most closely guarded and preserved to this day. An old Lakota proverb says that "A people without a history is like wind in the buffalo grass." People are, and should be, proud to call themselves Lakota whether they are full blood or have merely enough of a bloodline tie to be able to claim this noble heritage.
I have long felt that it was up to me to spark the interest and so have compiled this document to pass along to my children and especially my grandchildren and, since 2014, great grandchildren since the passage of time seems to erode these things. I have tended to shy away from the usual Indian history stories such as the Indian Wars of the 1800s, very well documented hot news
and fodder of dime novels, etc. Everyone knows the word Indian was a mistaken nomenclature adopted in the days of Columbus when he thought he was headed for India. Since then it has become somewhat controversial and various attempts have been made to assuage the objections of many over the use of the term. I use a variety of terms in this work but have found that a large number of the People actually prefer being called Indians. Other terms that have been developed to indicate the people of North and South America who were here first including Native American (any European descendant born on the continent qualifies for that one), Indigenous Peoples (sounds too much like indigent), First Nations and others seem to have fallen out of favor these days. Activist Russell Means addresses the subject in the movie Wounded Heart.
The information that I’m including in this document is more culturally oriented. It has all been recorded and well documented over the years as well and I am here merely attempting to provide a synopsis, a pocket guide if you will, of this vast sea of information. Hopefully all will find it useful, accurate, interesting, and perhaps it will serve to incite further research on the part of my children and grandchildren to learn about their background and heritage. For heritage is not determined by culture or bloodline or the percentage thereof. Rather, heritage is a part of identity and to acquire it means to know it, to be aware of all it entails, its history, its culture, whether practiced to any degree or not.
In reading this piece, you will notice that I often include several different spellings or words for the various subjects being discussed. As with most languages, Lakota has changed over time so that it is not spoken the same today as it was of old, not to mention the changes resulting from the drastic influence white civilizing efforts inflicted on the culture and language. Many times the spelling is an anglicized version of the phonics of the word as it fell on white ears. Sometimes there are just different words for the same name or term. Sometimes concepts are misinterpreted due to the paucity of words in the old Lakota vocabulary, the same word being required to express widely varying concepts. Some sources use different methods of writing things than others in trying to produce the greatest degree of accuracy. For example, some authors use Lakotas to pluralize the word. Others try to use more of the Lakota language by saying Lakotapi which is actually a somewhat inaccurate anglicized version. Pi
in Lakota is not used with nouns but with verbs so that the real translation is more like they are Lakotas
.
Other confusing factors are things like inflections, apostrophes, diacritical marks, hash marks and others that try to put the emphasis on the right syllables. Many letters have distinct symbolism and are pronounced with a nasal tone. The letter n
, following a vowel, is not pronounced separately, but indicates that the preceding vowel is nasalized. Other times words are spelled one way and it is left up to the reader to pronounce them correctly as in the case of the letters s
and c
. Both of these letters are often pronounced, more so the latter, as though they have an h
attached to them. An example would be the word for white man, wasicu. This word is actually pronounced washichu. And k
is sometimes like g
, p
like b
and t
like d
; e
is pronounced ay
, i
is ee
and a
is broad as in father.
Words are often a combination of several syllables or words that have a meaning of their own and can be combined to slightly change the word but impart a different meaning. Word for word or line by line translation rather than whole phrase or whole speech translation often misses the point altogether. In using the words in my text, I tried to pick the version of a word or words that I felt was most accurate such as the way I wrote Wakan Tanka as two words even though it often appears as one or is hyphenated. The word wakan is actually two words, wa
and kan
. Wa means anything that is something or anything with which something can be done while kan means anything that is old, existed for a long time, is a strange or wonderful thing, cannot be comprehended, should not be questioned or is a sacred or supernatural thing. Wa is, to further complicate this scenario, one of a list of five descriptive syllables that can be used before and two that can be used after the word kan
to give it different meanings. Writing Wakan Tanka as two words just seems to be a more accurate and meaningful rendition of the original Dakota pronunciation. No matter how intricately a concept is written or explained, understanding this extensive and complicated subject of Lakota lore is difficult at best.
––––––––
THE BEGINNING
I have always been amazed that virtually every human community worldwide believed in a creating spirit, God or gods. The Lakota were deeply religious with very complicated rituals. Living as they did in harmony with the land was, I feel, largely behind their strong religious bond with the environment, creation and the supernatural. They feel that some power has been given to everything, even rocks. The power or spiritual presence called a nagila just surrounds it so that there is not power in the air everywhere. I visualize this mystique as a fuzzy border of the kind you see when you are nearsighted.
The amount of power something has is whatever amount it needs for ordinary survival. Rocks and boulders were the hardest and strongest things so they belonged to the oldest gods, the archaic term being tunkan, ancient of days, which is a contraction of the word for grandfather and parallels the Christian Rock of Ages. Many a forgotten warrior has gone to the highest hill when his son was sick and, amidst fasting and incantations, erected a mound of stones in the hope that his loved one’s life might be spared. This just might be the explanation behind all the small piles of rock on the high ridge between Shenon Creek and Horse Prairie west of Dillon. My good friend, Jerry Lewis, has long believed them to be buffalo hunting blinds; I still lean toward my theory that they are remnant bases of long extinct fenceposts.
The striking parallels to modern Christianity and other religions are amazing. Many Native American tribes referred to Old Man or some other variation of that term. Lakota usually refer to the Great Mystery or Wakan Tanka. Wakan is translated as holy or sacred or, sometimes, mysterious or having a spiritual quality such as the gun that had no word to describe it when first it appeared and so was called the maza wakan or holy iron. Some people have used power or powerful but that is not really complete because it does not reflect the principles which are in Wakan Tanka; it is not the kind of power that dominates but the kind that animates. Tanka means big or great but the literal translation of Big Holy
doesn’t really get it either. A better way of putting it would be Holiest of Everything
since He is believed to be everywhere and in everything. It can be a confusing concept.
Wakan Tanka is believed to be Grandfather and Father. As Grandfather, He is the Great Spirit, independent of manifestation, unqualified, unlimited, identical to the Christian Godhead, or to the Hindu Brahma-Nirguna. Wakan Tanka as Father is the Great Spirit considered in relation to His manifestation, either as Creator, Preserver or Destroyer, identical to the Christian God or to the Hindu Brahma-Saguna. Another way of looking at it is that Wakan Tanka (Ate), Grandfather (Tunkashila) and the spirit powers make a trinity as in the Christian religions. This is why many Lakota chose the Catholic religion when reservations were created and various sects sent missionaries but all the while questioning the white man’s motives. They had followed Christian precepts for untold ages owning nothing because everything is from Him. Food and land were as free as
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