Restoring Buffalo to the Dakota Plains::

Valuing the Buffalo

The United States' joint policy of buffalo extermination and Indian assimilation was good sense according to the officials of the time, based as it was on a keen understanding of the Plains Indians' close relationship with the buffalo.

Tatanka translates as the buffalo bull and pte the buffalo cow, although today pte is used colloquially to mean buffalo of either gender and tatanka is used in a ritual context to mean the spirit of the buffalo. It is tatanka who gave the Lakota the physical buffalo in ancient times so that the Lakota might live.

Though the Lakota maintained an intimate relationship with all aspects of the natural world, it is their relationship to the buffalo that is the most intense. Lame Deer stated that it is impossible to understand a Lakota's relationship to nature without first understanding his relationship to the buffalo. In fact, the buffalo is as a brother to the people, and the two even share the same body structure, he exclaimed: narrow hips and broad shoulders (Lame Deer 1972).

Invoking a Christian analogy, the deceased Oglala medicine man stated that the act of eating the flesh and the blood of the buffalo is an act of union between it and the Lakota: "The buffalo was part of us, his flesh and blood being absorbed by us until it became our own flesh and blood. Our clothing, our tipis, everything we needed for life came from the buffalo's body. It was hard to say where the animal ended and the man began" (1972: 269). A similar belief was articulated to me by Fred Dubray, a Minneconjou Lakota from the Cheyenne River reservation who is striving to restore buffalo meat to the Lakota diet once again: "If [buffalo meat] is the mainstay in your diet, then you actually start taking in that power within your own self, also. So you become part of that" (1998).

Because the buffalo once provided the Lakota with all the things they needed to survive, it became a symbol of the universe itself. All of life is contained within the animal and each particular part of it represents a particular part of life. For example, according to Oglala medicine man, the late Nicholas Black Elk, the meat of the buffalo's shoulder represents humanity and its four legs represent the four ages of creation.

The buffalo had originated deep in the bowels of the earth, in a tipi that is still there. The hole from which they emerged to the surface of the earth was named as Wind Cave, in the Black Hills, by everyone I spoke with during my fieldwork. The buffalo's tipi still remains underground, I was told, and it is to this subterranean home that the buffalo returned when their lives came under threat in the mid- to late 1800s. The buffalo still dance and conduct all their ceremonies in this tipi and the round depressions on the prairie were created by the buffaloes dancing.

Tatanka, or the spirit of the buffalo, presides over fecundity, virtue, industry and the family. It is the patron of hunting and the tipi, or home, and the guardian of menstruating and pregnant women. Its spirit resides in its skull, though its potency can reside in every part of its body, for example its shed hair and its horns. During ceremony, the horns of the buffalo are very important for their attachment to the skull signifies a potent, living force. If the horns are detached from the skull, it is said that the power of the buffalo has returned to its home in the earth.

The buffalo is the consort of the sun, in whose midst he resides every night under the world. One Oglala spiritual practitioner also drew my attention to the relationship between the sun and the buffalo:

"The buffalo also, because of its fur and because of its relationship to the sun - the sun and the buffalo and the eagle are all sort of related because they're all solar beings, they're all part of the sunlight, that power of creating life, and it has to do with the things above. And the golden eagle and the buffalo have similar colouring. That golden colour, or the implication of that golden colour is also implied in the sun as well" (1998).

Both the sun and the buffalo contain within them the creative principle that brings forth and gives life to the world. They are both representatives of the 'above' - the spirit realm. Their golden colour signifies vitality and strength. This relationship is further underscored by the fact that the buffalo is the first to greet the sun in the morning.

Two ceremonies are especially associated with the buffalo: the Hunka, or Naming ceremony, and the Tatanka Lowanpi, or Girl's Puberty Rite. In the Hunka ceremony, those that have been named in such a way also becomes a hunka, or relative, of tatanka. A woman who has gone through the Tatanka Lowanpi, belongs to tatanka and becomes a Buffalo Woman. As such, she is supposed to be industrious and generous, and is encouraged to produce many children. Though I did not witness either ceremony, I was told that they are still being performed here and there in Lakota Country. Generally taking place in the country, as opposed to the towns, they tend to be small and private affairs today.

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