A Lakota telling · a storybook in 5 pages
As Lakota tradition-bearers tell it, a sacred woman gave the people a pipe and rites, then became a white buffalo calf. One telling among several.
As the tradition tells it, a sacred woman appeared to two hunters. One looked at her with disrespect and was struck down; the other honored her, and was sent home to prepare his people for what she carried.
She gave the people a sacred pipe and taught seven rites for how to live and pray. Some tellings, including the one Black Elk gave in 1947, describe those rites in full; here, only that they were given.
Her teaching finished, the tradition holds, she walked away and, as she went, became a white buffalo calf. Tellings differ on the details of how.
The pipe is still held today, passed down through named keepers. Arvol Looking Horse, its nineteenth-generation keeper, has spoken about the covenant publicly, as Black Elk and others did before him.
In 1994 a white buffalo calf named Miracle was born on a Wisconsin farm. Many took it, alongside later white calves, as a sign that the covenant still holds.