THE WHITE BUFFALO Westhope, N.D. -- Between August 17 and September 2, 2002, four non-albino white buffalo calves were born on the ranch of Dwaine and Debbie Kirk. There were now some ten white buffalo in the American bison population of 350,000, according to Bob Pickering of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. Pickering estimates the odds of a single non-albino calf being born at sixteen in one million; an albino, eight in one million. The National Bison Association puts the odds higher for an albino: one in ten million. The Great Plains Indians told a legend about two warrior hunters who were observing a buffalo herd. One animal was snow white.
They marveled over the creature. The white buffalo suddenly raced toward them and was transformed into a beautiful woman. One warrior grew aroused. The spirit woman told him she knew what he was thinking and asked him to step forward. He did, and they were engulfed in a cloud. When the woman stepped out as the cloud dissipated, all that remained of the warrior was a pile of bones swarming with maggots. The other warrior fell to his knees. The spirit woman told him to return to his encampment and in four days she would visit.
On the fourth day, a cloud descended at the camp. From it emerged a white buffalo calf, which materialized into the woman. She held a sacred bundle and taught the people sacred ceremonies: sweat lodge purification, healing, marriage, the Sun Dance. Some of this legend is recorded in the 1932 bookBlack Elk Speaks: The Life Story of a Holy Man of the Ogalala Sioux,by John G. Neihardt. Black Elk fought against the invaders with Crazy Horse and survived the massacre at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Now blind and very old, Black Elk recounted stories passed down over generations, including the White Buffalo Calf Woman story. When she arrived on the fourth day, said Black Elk, she sang this song: With visible breath I am walking A voice I am sending as I walk In a sacred manner I am walking With visible tracks I am walking In a sacred manner I walk "Then she gave something to the chief, and it was a pipe with a bison calf carved on one side to mean the earth that bears and feeds us, and with twelve eagle feathers hanging from the stem to mean the sky and the twelve moons, and these were tied with a grass that never breaks," Black Elk said.
In other accounts, the White Buffalo Calf Woman said that when a white buffalo was born, it would prophesy her return, and harmony would visit the world. Other accounts interpret the birth of a white buffalo as heralding a return to the old ways. " 'Behold!' she said," according to Black Elk, speaking of the sacred pipe. " 'With this you shall multiply and be a good nation'.she sang again.and as the people watched her going suddenly it was a white bison galloping away and snorting, and soon it was gone." Hundreds of years later, Europeans crossed the Alleghenies and came to the Midwest flatlands. By 1869 the white population of Iowa surpassed 1 million.
The Sioux, who had occupied the northern and western parts of Iowa, were pushed onto a 35,000-square-mile reservation in the Dakotas, which stretched from the Missouri River west to the 104th Meridian. After 1876 the government changed the boundary to the 103rd Meridian, carving off a 50-mile strip that included the gold-rich Black Hills. Still, with more settlers arriving, the whites wanted even more acreage. So the Indians were cheated or attacked, and the great Dakota reservation was broken up by 1889. The Sioux were defeated in battle, but hope emerged in the Drying Grass Moon on October 9, 1890, when word came to the Sioux about a Paiute messiah named Wovoka in Nevada, who had founded a new religion, a Christian-pagan fusion called the Ghost Dance. "All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing," Wovoka commanded.<.