Lakota Sioux Myths of Place::

Badlands

Mako Sica, or the bad lands, were near the geographical centre of the Lakota's domain, being virtually adjacent to the Black Hills. The rocky terrain appeared desolate and barren to European eyes, but to the Lakota the region was filled with spirits. The people buried their dead, sought visions and performed sundances there.

Lakota mythology explains the origin of the Badlands and describes a mythic description of its volcanic origins. There was a time when all the lands that lay east of the Black Hills were lush and green, covered with trees and plants and crisscrossed with clear streams and the tracks of numerous animals. The region was a peaceful one for the Lakota and there was no intertribal warfare there.

One day, a tribe swept in from the west, desperate for clothing and food. In their greed and hunger, they drove off all the other tribes, and refused to be placated by the offer of gifts, sacred pipes, prayers or pleas. Nothing could persuade this tribe to share the bounty of the land. Finally, the displaced tribes gathered together and plotted to drive out the greedy tribe.

On the day of their advance, however, Wakantanka caused a commotion in the heavens and in the ground. He caused dark clouds to hide the sun, lightning to streak across the darkness, thunder to rumble through the skies, fire to flame from the ground and the earth to shudder and rock. A vast chasm opened in the ground and into it everything sank - the people, the animals, the plants, and the springs. The storm ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The once-lush region was now a stark, rocky wasteland upon which nothing could ever grow.

The Badlands contains the fossilized remains of the dinosaur-like unktegila - great water monsters, each of which had one eye, a spine like the serrated edge of a saw, red hair all over its body and a horn in the middle of its forehead. The unktegila regularly fought with the Wakinyan, or Thunderbeing, who resided in the Black Hills. Wakinyan's missiles can also be found in the Badlands, in the form of coal-like stones called kangitame in Lakota.

© 2002 by Bornali Halder

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