Lakota Sioux Creation Mythology::

Wooing Wohpe (Miscellaneous Narrative)

In this tale, Wohpe's dress is used as a mythic metaphor to describe the earth's surface. This is also yet another tale that describes the intense conflict among the Four Winds.

One day, the sons of Tate began to argue over who should win the heart of Wohpe. Each, except South Wind, fought for her, and she continued to resist them. North Wind was arrogant, loud and brash and was constantly professing his love for Wohpe. But Wohpe wanted only that he love her as a sister, not as a wife. Repeatedly she warned him that if he loved her as a wife, he would forever be associated with ice and snow and cold.

Wohpe is both the centre of the earth and the source of the earth's fertility and regenerative power. Her dress is covered with ornaments that freeze and die when touched by the North Wind, only to be regenerated with the help of the South Wind. This image of the conflict between North and South Wind leads, for Jahner, "to the temporal, seasonal rhythms that create the quality of space" in the universe (Walker 1983: 181).¹ The myth also reveals how, in order for Wohpe to protect herself from North Wind's unwanted attentions, she must hide beneath her dress, with her dress expanding farther and farther outward. Such self-protection manifests itself in the creation of vegetation on the earth.

It was South Wind who eventually won her love, with his gentle, quiet ways. And it was with South Wind that she set up home in the centre of the earth. But after such intense fighting, the brothers realised they could never again live with one another, and so each of them went his own direction. The jealous North Wind, however, continued to periodically freeze Wohpe's dress, and each time the other winds strove to warm it. This warfare between the seasons continues today.

Notes::

• 1 - James R. Walker. 1983. Lakota Myth. Edited by Elaine A. Jahner. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.