[Guitar Music]
My name is Sina Bear Eagle, and I am a member
of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. Wind Cave is very special to us. In our language we call it
Oniya Oshoka or Maka Oniye, which means "the earth is breathing". And the reason this cave
is so special to us is that this is the site of our emergence story, which is part of our
larger creation story. Now, in Lakota culture, culture and history
are passed on through an oral tradition, that is stories going from generation to generation.
And for that reason there can be a lot of variations of the same story, but in our culture
what's important to us is not the smaller details but the larger idea. The larger idea
in any story you hear about Wind Cave, is that Lakota people emerged out of Wind Cave.
So the story was passed on to me by Wilmer Mesteth, who was our tribal historian and
an elder in our tribe. Wilmer unfortunately passed away towards the beginning of 2015.
But in our culture when our elders pass away like this, the way that we honor them and
keep their memory alive is to keep telling the stories they told us and to keep teaching
the things that they taught us.
What emergence means in an anthropological sense is that a people believe that they lived
underground, and they emerged onto the surface of the earth. The story I tell is a little
different, because in this story Wind Cave is a passageway and somewhere hidden deep
inside this passageway is a portal to the Spirit World, and that's where the people
were living. They were waiting until the earth was ready for them.
So the story begins at a time when the earth was here and all the plant and animals, but
there were no people yet, and there were no bison either. There were two spirits who had
been banished to the surface of the earth. Their names were Iktomi, the trickster spirit,
and Anog-Ite, the double face woman. This was a woman who had two faces on her head.
On one side she had a really beautiful face and on the other she had a really horrible
face; it was twisted and gnarled.
Now these two spirits only had each other for company. So Iktomi was always playing
tricks on Anog-Ite, just bothering her and torturing her, and she really hated him. Until,
he started to get bored and he decided he was going to play a trick on the human beings.
So he asked for Anog-Ite's help, and he told her that if she helped him he never would
bother her again, and so she agreed. So to begin the trick, Anog-Ite took a pack. She
loaded this pack with buckskin clothing that was beatifically decorated with porcupine
quill work, with all kinds of berries, and dried meats. And she put it onto the back
of her wolf companion. Ikotmi the trickster opened the hole in the ground and sent the
wolf down inside through the cave's passageways, until it found the portal and went through
to meet the humans. Now once there it showed them everything that was on its back, and
they took out the clothes, they passed them around and tried them on, and tasted the berries,
but it was the meat that they really liked, because there is nothing like that in the
spirit world. They wanted more. So the wolf told them, "If you come with me to this place
called the earth you can have all these things and more."
Well, the leader of the people was a man named Tokahe, and he didn't want to go. He said,
"The creator told us to wait here till the earth was ready, and that's what I'm going
to do." Most of the people decided to wait with Tokahe, but the ones who has tasted the
meat went with the wolf. So, the wolf led them through the dark passages of the cave,
and when they came up to the surface the very first thing they saw was a giant blue sky
above them. It was summer time, so all the hills around there were covered in green and
yellow grasses. These people thought this was the most beautiful place they had ever
seen.
The wolf led them to the lodge of Anog-Ite; she was in disguise. She had a shawl over
her head, hiding her horrible face and showing only her beautiful face. So, she invited them
inside. She fed them, and she told them that she would teach them how to get everything
the wolf brought. She was true to her word. She taught them how to hunt and to gather
berries, dry meat, quill clothing. But this work was very difficult, and these people
actually had an easy life in the spirit world. So they worked slowly, and they got tired
easily.
And you have to remember, they knew nothing about the seasons on the earth. So, when winter
came, they weren't ready for it. They didn't have enough clothes for everyone or enough
food, so they started to freeze and starve. And they were desperate for help, so they
went back to Anog-Ite. But it was at that time that she revealed her true intentions.
She pulled the shawl from her head, revealing her horrible face. With both her faces, beautiful
and horrible, she started to laugh at the people. The people were all terrified of her,
so they ran away back to the hole they'd come from only to find that Iktomi had closed it
up again, leaving them trapped on the surface.
So, these people didn't know what to do, or where to go. They were cold, and they were
hungry. So they just sat down on the ground, and they started to cry. It was at that time
that the creator heard them and asked why they were there. They told the story of the
wolf and Anog-Ite, but the creator was upset. The creator said, "You should not have disobeyed
me, because now I have to punish you." The way the creator did that was by transforming
them, turning them from people into these great wild beasts. And this was the first
bison herd.
So some time passed, and finally the earth was ready. Tokahe led the people out of the
cave, and along the way they stopped four times to rest and to pray, and for that reason
four is a sacred number in Lakota culture.
Now when they emerged from the cave, they saw everything the people before them did,
but there was also a bison hoof print on the ground. So the creator told them to, "Follow
that bison, because if you follow the bison you will have everything you need to live
on this earth. From it you can get food, clothing shelter; it leads you to water." And as the
people were leaving to follow the bison, the creator did one more thing. And that was to
shrink down the hole from the size of a person down to the size it is today, so that the
people would always have it and they'd never forget where they came from, but also so that
they'd know not to try to go back to the spirit world, because their lives were on the earth
now.
[Guitar Music]