Lakota Texts

Lakota Texts is a treasure trove of stories told in the original language by modern Lakota women who make their home in Denver, Colorado. Sometimes witty, often moving, and invariably engaging and fascinating, these stories are both autobiographical and cultural. The stories present personal experiences along with lessons the women have learned or were taught about Lakota history, culture, and legends. The women share aspects of their own lives, including such rituals as powwows, the sweatlodge, and rites of puberty. The women also include details of the older Lakota world and its customs, revered myths, more recent stories, and jokes. In addition to the valuable light Lakota Texts sheds on the lives of modern Lakota women, these stories also represent a significant contribution to American Indian linguistics. Regina Pustet has meticulously transcribed and translated the stories in a detailed, interlinear format that makes the texts a rich source of information about modern Lakota language itself.

James R. Walker was a physician to the Pine Ridge Sioux from 1896 to 1914. His accounts of this time, taken from his personal papers, reveal much about Lakota life and culture. This third volume of previously unpublished material from the Walker collection presents his work on Lakota myth and legend. This edition includes classic examples of Lakota oral literature, narratives that were known only to a few Oglala holy men, and Walker's own literary cycle based on all he had learned about Lakota myth. Lakota Myth is an indispensable source for students of comparative literature, religion, and mythology, as well as those interested in Lakota culture.

As agency physician on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1896 to 1914, Dr. James R. Walker recorded a wealth of information on the traditional lifeways of the Oglala Sioux. Lakota Society presents the primary accounts of Walker's informants and his syntheses dealing with the organization of camps and bands, kinship systems, beliefs, ceremonies, hunting, warfare, and methods of measuring time.

"The real value of Lakota Belief and Ritual is that it provides raw narratives without any pretension of synthesis or analysis, as well as insightful biographical information on the man who contributed more than any other individual to our understanding of early Oglala ritual and belief." Plains Anthropologist"In the writing of Indian history, historians and other scholars seldom have the opportunity to look at the past through 'native eyes' or to immerse themselves in documents created by Indians. For the Oglala and some of the other divisions of the Lakota, the Walker materials provide this kind of experience in fascinating and rich detail during an important transition period in their history." Minnesota History"This collection of documents is especially remarkable because it preserves individual variations of traditional wisdom from a whole generation of highly developed wicasa wakan (holy men). . . . Lakota Belief and Ritual is a wasicun (container of power) that can make traditional Lakota wisdom assume new life." American Indian Quarterly"A work of prime importance. . . . its publication represents a major addition to our knowledge of the Lakotas' way of life" Journal of American FolkloreRaymond J. DeMallie, director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute and a professor of anthropology at Indiana University, is the editor of James R. Walker's Lakota Society (1982) and of The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (1984, a Bison Book), both published by the University of Nebraska Press. Elaine A. Jahner, a professor of English at Dartmouth College, has edited Walker's Lakota Myth (1983), also a Bison Book.

LAKOTA TALES AND TEXTS IN TRANSLATION has a remarkable history of its own. The original Lakota manuscript was rescued from destruction during the violent occupation of the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, during the late winter of 1973. In 1970, Paul Manhart, a Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus and at the time a pastor in that village, had published Eugene Buechel, S.J.'s monumental Lakota-English Dictionary, with the late Louis and Daisy Whirlwind Horse assisting. Louis had been a tribal interpreter and Daisy was a highly perceptive translator. Father Manhart had an office in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church overlooking the mass grave of Lakota visitor victims of the 1890 massacre. At the time of occupation, he had borrowed the original manuscript of Buechel's "Lakota Tales and Texts" from the Holy Rosary Mission archives. He was planning soon to publish it. So he kept it on a lower shelf in the far corner of his small library. Early during the occupation, he and two local men, Benjamin White Butterfly and Ruben Mesteth, took a box and went to the office, only to find it in shambles and the room and library shelves stripped of books - all except the Tales and Texts manuscript in the corner, a dingy home-made book in Lakota long-hand, untouched. All else was gone. In June of 1978 then, "Lakota Tales and Texts" was published in St. Louis. Father Manhart prepared this translation to answer many requests from teachers of history, social sciences, and language; and to lay a groundwork for preparing a series of Lakota language texts for systematically teaching the language in a two or four-year high school course. In Louis and Daisy Whirlwind Horse's words: "Our children will lose some real and conscious contact with their roots unless we continue to record and study Lakota."

For centuries, a persistent and important component of Lakota religious life has been the Inipi, the ritual of the sweat lodge. The sweat lodge has changed little in appearance since its first recorded description in the late seventeenth century. The ritual itself consists of songs, prayers, and other actions conducted in a tightly enclosed, dark, and extremely hot environment. Participants who “sweat” together experience moral strengthening, physical healing, and the renewal of social and cultural bonds. Today, the sweat lodge ritual continues to be a vital part of Lakota religion. It has also been open to use, often controversial, by non-Indians. The ritual has recently become popular among Lakotas recovering from alcohol and drug addiction. This study is the first in-depth look at the history and significance of the Lakota sweat lodge. Bringing together data culled from historical sources and fieldwork on Pine Ridge Reservation, Raymond A. Bucko provides a detailed discussion of continuity and changes in the “sweat” ritual over time. He offers convincing explanations for the longevity of the ceremony and its continuing popularity.

Ella Deloria (1889?1971), one of the first Native students of linguistics and ethnography in the United States, grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation on the northern Great Plains and was trained by Franz Boas at Columbia University. Dakota Texts presents a rich array of Sioux mythology and folklore in its original language and in translation. Originally published in 1932 by the American Ethnological Society, this work is a landmark contribution to the study of the Sioux tribes.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Lakota Tradition -- 2. Lakota Practice -- 3. George Sword -- 4. Lakota Formulas -- 5. Textual Analysis -- 6. Lakota Theme -- 7. Traditional Implications -- Appendix 1: Narrative 1 and Literary Translation -- Appendix 2: Narrative 2 and Literary Translation -- Appendix 3: Narrative 3 and Literary Translation -- Appendix 4: Sun Dance Narrative andLiterary Translation -- Notes -- References -- Index