Background

According to Lakotan traditions, before there were human beings the spirits lived in the underworld. Two of the spirits were Wi and Hanwi. Wi, the Sun, and Hanwi, the Moon, were husband and wife.  At that time they traveled together. When they were beneath the horizon, it was nighttime, and when they were in the sky, it was daytime. These were the first two periods of time in the Lakotan universe.

The spirits created the Pte, or Buffalo, people to serve them. The Ptean people are the ancestors of modern Lakotans. The relationship between the spirits and the Pteans was strengthened by the marriage of Ite, a beautiful Ptean woman, and Tate, the spirit Wind. Ite and Tate were the parents of quadruplet sons: Yata, Eya, Yanpa and Okagha. These four brothers were spirits and would eventually establish the four directions on the earth. But at this time, they lived in the underworld.

The Lakotan universe might be characterized as a sphere with a circular disk dividing it into two halves. The disk is thicker near its center and tapers gradually to a thin edge that is near but does not touch the surface of the sphere. One half of the sphere is our world and the other half is the underworld. These two worlds are separated by the thick disk that is called Maka, the Earth. When it is daytime in one world it is nighttime in the other.

The Lakotan universe is governed by order and structure. Order and structure are good. Disorder and chaos are bad. One character who can bring disorder and chaos into the Lakotan universe is the trickster Iktomi, and it was Iktomi who set in motion a complicated scheme that disrupted the order of the underworld.

One night at a feast for the spirits, Ite sat beside Wi in the place where Hanwi was supposed to be seated. Iktomi tricked Ite into thinking she was a more deserving companion of Wi than was Hanwi; he tricked Wi into forgetting about his wife and therefore allowing Ite to set in her place; and he tricked Hanwi into arriving late to the feast, thereby leaving her seat beside Wi unoccupied.

When Hanwi arrived at the feast and saw that Ite was sitting in her place beside Wi, she was ashamed and pulled her shawl over her head, covering her face.  After the feast, Shkan asked Hanwi why she covered her face, so she explained what happened. Being the most powerful of the spirits, Shkan then decided on an appropriate punishment for all the spirits and Pteans who were involved in the scheme. He banished Ite and her family, along with Iktomi, from the underworld.

Shkan then decreed that Wi and Hanwi could no longer control daytime and nighttime together. Beginning then, Hanwi would control the night, and Wi would control the day. Shkan said that when Hanwi was far away from Wi, she could show her full face, but whenever she was near him she would have to hide her face. When Hanwi is near Wi and hides her face, it is a new moon. When she is far from Wi and shows her face, it is a full moon.

In the Lakotan universe, the time from full moon to full moon established the third period of time, a month.  A full moon is when Hanwi and Wi are in the sky opposite each other, either at sunrise or sunset.  A new moon is when Hanwi and Wi are side-by-side in the sky.  As Hanwi travels closer to her husband, she starts to cover her face, and as she leaves away from him, she starts to show more of her face again. The covering and uncovering of her face, based on her proximity to Wi, are the phases of the moon.

After the feast, Ite and her family were banished to this world, as was Iktomi, the trickster. Ite’s husband, Tate, lived with their sons. But as one condition of her banishment, Ite lived alone, far away from her family.  Another condition was that she was given a second hideous face, and thereby a new name: Anunk Ite, Double Face.

Eventually the quadruplet sons of Anunk Ite and Tate established the four directions, thereby bringing order to this world. The first direction was established by Eya at the west, then the second by Yata to the north, next was Yanpa to the east, and finally Okagha to the south. Their journey around the edge of the world to mark the four directions also established the fourth period of time – a year. The four directions and the four periods of time organized and structured the world. The world was then ready for Lakotans to come and live upon it.

Traditional Lakotan belief is that their ancestors emerged onto this earth through Washun Niya, a cave in what is now the Black Hills of South Dakota. The narrative that describes this emergence process was written down by James Walker sometime between 1896, when he first arrived at Pine Ridge to serve as the agency’s physician, and 1917 when it was published by the American Museum of Natural History. Recognizing the necessity of learning from medicine men in order to improve the health of Lakotans, Walker sought to join a medicine society and thereby learn about healing.  After a lengthy and rigorous process, Walker was inducted into the buffalo medicine society in 1905. He had learned the songs and incantations, but even after his induction the holy men were reluctant to share esoteric information about their deep cultural understandings with him. Subsequently George Sword appealed to the holy men on behalf of Walker, stating “that soon they would go from the world and all their sacred lore would pass with them unless they revealed it so that it could be preserved in writing; that future generations of the Oglalas should be informed as to all that their ancestors believed and practiced; that the Gods of the Oglalas would be more pleased if the holy men told of them so that they might be kept in remembrance and that all the world might know of them.”

In response, Short Bull, a Sicanguan spiritual leader, sought a vision to determine whether this secret information should be shared with Walker.  Apparently the spirits were satisfied, for Walker wrote, “the holy men would reveal to me the mysteries of their order and tell me their sacred lore.” Between then and when he left Pine Ridge in 1914, Walker gathered many stories and insights from the medicine men. One of the narratives that must have been shared with Walker was “How the Lakota Came Upon the World.” However, it is one of only two narratives out of the dozens that he gathered that is not specifically attributed to any of the spiritual leaders or the many other Lakotans who shared cultural information with Walker.

Because Walker never recorded how he gathered the emergence story, there have been critics of him and of his work. One of these critics was Ella Deloria, a Nakotan linguist, who set out in 1937 to interview elder Lakotans in Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations regarding the authenticity of Walker’s work. She discovered that none of the men who taught Walker were still alive, and no one would corroborate what Walker had written only a couple decades earlier. Even now, over a hundred years since the publication of the emergence narrative, its authenticity and relevance are still being debated. Nevertheless, a close reading of the narrative correlates with other Lakotan narratives on many levels. This suggests that the emergence narrative is inherently Lakotan instead of something Walker himself created.