Out of the plains of Wyoming rises Devil’s Tower. It is really a rock, visible for a hundred miles around, an immense cone of basalt which seems to touch the clouds. Devil’s Tower sticks out of the flat prairie as if someone had pushed it up from underground. Continue to The Legend of Devil’s Tower →
This is the White Buffalo Calf Woman prophecy of the Sioux tribe. One summer so long ago that nobody knows how long, the OcetiShakowin, the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Oyate, the nation, came together and camped. The sun shone all the time, but there was no game and the people were starving. Every day they sent scouts to look for game, but the scouts found nothing. Continue to White Buffalo Calf Woman Prophecy →
Red Cloud gave this farewell address to the Lakota people on July 4, 1903, as he anticipated death approaching. Continue to Red Cloud’s last words to his people →
The Dakota and Nakota people of Standing Rock include the Upper Yanktonai (in their language called Ihanktonwana, which translates to “little end villages”) and Yanktonai from the Cut Head Band. The Cut Heads, whose name is literally translated, get their title from the fact that when they withdrew from the Yanktonais, there was a row over the secession and a fight ensued. Their leader sustained a scalp wound and the name Cut Head was given. The Yankton and Yanktonais are called the Wiceyala or Middle Sioux.
Continue to Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North & South Dakota →
The White Buffalo Woman Legend, or how the Lakota got the Peace Pipe...One summer so long ago that nobody knows how long, the OcetiShakowin, the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Oyate, the nation, came together and camped. The sun shone all the time, but there was no game and the people were starving. Every day they sent scouts to look for game, but the scouts found nothing.
At the age of nine, Nicholas Black Elk, a holy man of the Oglala Sioux, had a great vision. This vision was the primary subject of his interview with writer John Neihardt and Neihardt's subsequent 1932 novel, Black Elk Speaks. As the title suggests, Neihardt's novel is the medium through which Black Elk shares his life narrative. Through the novel, in addition to the recounting of his great vision and other significant events in his personal history, Black Elk voices significant events and figures in Sioux history.