The central position of the buffalo (Bison bison) in the symbolic universe of the Natives of the Great Plains is in part justified by the place occupied by this animal in the economy and material culture of these peoples. It is not surprising to observe that it was associated with notions like abundance, fertility and food.
According to a widely diffused tradition of the Plains, the buffalo lived in the underground world, and were given to humans generally through the intervention of a supernatural being, who makes them spring out from an opening into the earth or from a cave. An old Lakota man, Bad Wound, reported to James Walker, in the early XIXth century, that the buffalo came from the earth, where they lived in tipis (the classic skin tent used by the nomadic peoples). The buffalo celebrated ceremonies, like human beings, and the circular depressions sometimes observed on the prairies, were the places in which they had held their dances (Walker 1980: p. 124). He adds that the young buffalo cows could turn into humanlike females, and their little calves were like children.
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Drawing made by a Cheyenne in the early 1900s for anthropologist George Dorsey, as illustration of the buffalo origin myth. The animals comes out from a cave following Herect Horns, the culture hero (Dorsey 1905).
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The Spirit of the Buffalo (Tatanka) helps humans in the hunt and protects women and girls during their menstrual period and during pregnancy (Walker 1980: p. 121).
The world of the buffalo assumes then a clearly female feature. From these connections of the animal spirits with the earth e with reproduction, fertility and prosperity of the animal species, a special relationship descends between the game animal and the woman, to whom is devolved the duty to assure, with her own reproductive capacity, the continuity of the human group. Such a connection is explicit in the image of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, who, according to Lakota mythology, gave to humankind the Sacred Pipe and, with it, the essential teachings for the performance of the main religious rituals.
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Painted buffalo skull, stuffed with sacred herbs, employed during the Arapaho Sun Dance (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). |
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The Cheyenne told another story, according to which a correct relationship was established between man and buffalo. The protagonist is again a buffalo-woman, who manifests herself in the evening to a human hunter as a woman, with her tent and a boy. But as soon as the sun is rising, woman and boy disappear, with the whole lodge, and the hunter finds himself alone on the prairie. But he does not gave up and pursued the research, comes to the buffalo people and has to face a number of trials, the most important among them is a racing game. At that time the world was not yet definitively ordained, and the relationships between humans and animals were not yet established. The animals, including the buffalo, ate human beings. The racing game was to establish the specific role of each of the contenders: the human wins, thanks to the help of the magpie and of the crow. From this moment on, the winners of the race are those who eat the other animals. The relationship between the hunter and his game, between those who kill and those who are killed, those who eat and those who are eaten, has been thus established once and for all (Comba 1999: p. 175-180).
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