Athenaeum
A Place for study of the arts

The legends pertaining to White Buffalo Calf Woman are many.  The following is an excerpt from one version of the tale and is only the part having to do with the way of the pipe.  White Buffalo Calf Woman is also credited with teaching the Sioux peoples about what to eat, how to cook and how to make fire among many other things.  While the outward sign of the pipe may be one of her more impressive gifts, her gift of the knowledge of the sacredness of each being is surely one of the most important inward gifts.

The White Buffalo Woman showed the people how to use the pipe. She filled it with chan-shasha, red willow bark tobacco. She walked around the lodge four times after the manner of Anpetu-Wi, the great sun. This represented the circle without end, the sacred hoop, the road of life. The woman placed a dry buffalo chip on the fire and lit the pipe with it. This was peta-owihankeshni, the fire without end, the flame to be passed on from generation to generation. She told them that the smoke rising from the bowl was Tunkashila's breath, the living breath of the great Grandfather Mystery.
The White Buffalo Woman showed the people the right way to pray, the right words and the right gestures. She taught them how to sing the pipe filling song and how to lift the pipe up to the sky, to Grandfather, and down toward Grandmother Earth, to Unci, and to. to the four directions of the universe.
"With this holy pipe," she said, "you will walk like a living prayer.
With your feet resting upon the earth and the pipe stem reaching into the sky, your body forms a living bridge between the Sacred Beneath and the Sacred Above. Wakan Tanka smiles upon us, because now we are as one: earth, sky, all living things, the two legged, the four legged, the winged ones, the trees, the grasses. Together with the people, they are all related, one Family. The pipe holds them all together.
"Look at this bowl," said the White Buffalo Woman. "Its stone represents the buffalo, but also the flesh and blood of the red man. The buffalo represents the universe and the four directions, because he stands on four legs, for the four ages of creation. The buffalo was put in the west by Wakan Tanka at the making of the world, to hold back the waters.
Every year he loses one hair, and in every one of the four ages he loses a leg. The sacred hoop will end when all the hair and legs of the great buffalo are gone, and the water comes back to cover the Earth.
   The wooden stem of this chanunpa stands for all that grows on the cold earth. Twelve feathers hanging from where the stem-the backbone-joins the bowl-the skull-are from Wanblee Galeshka, the spotted eagle, the very sacred bird who is the Great Spirit's messenger and the wisest of all flying ones. You are joined to all things of the universe, they all cry out to Tunkashila. Look at the bowl engraved in it are seven circles of various sizes. They stand for the seven sacred ceremonies you will practice with this pipe, and for the seven sacred campfires of our Lakota nation."
   The White Buffalo Woman then spoke to the women, telling them   She spoke that it was the work of their hands and the fruit of their bodies which  kept the people alive. "You are from the mother earth," she told them.
 "What you are doing is as great as what the warriors do,"  And therefore the sacred pipe is also something that binds men and
 women together in a circle of love. It is the one holy object in the making of which both men and women have a hand. The men carve the bowl and make the stem; the women decorate it with bands of colored porcupine quills. When a man takes a wife, they both hold the pipe at the same time and red trade cloth is wound around their hands, thus tying them together for life.