A General Outline of Lakota Sioux Philosophy::

Wakantanka, Wakan and Wakan Entities: The Foundations of Lakota Theology III

Wakinyan is the Winged or Thunder Being whose home is in the west, in hills claimed by some of my research participants to be the Black Hills of western South Dakota. Walker wrote:

"[H]is voice is the thunder clap and rolling thunder is caused by the beating of His wings on the clouds; he has an eye, and its glance is lightning. […] He flies through all the domain of the Sky, hidden in a robe of clouds, and if one of mankind sees His substance he is thereby made a heyoka, and must ever afterwards speak and act clownishly in an anti-natural manner" (1917: 83).¹

A spiritual practitioner told me of his first experience of the Wakinyan:

"See, one year, [his wife] and I were coming back from a ceremony, about two-thirty, three o'clock in the morning, and it was kind of cloudy and lightning was flashing, and we were just coming down to a stop sign out here, coming from Rosebud onto the highway, and lightning flashed behind a cloud and all of a sudden I seen this huge bird standing in the sky and I instantly knew what it was - that's the Thunderbird, that's the original Thunderbird. And it was standing in - […] well, its head was behind the clouds, and its feet were below the horizon, but I would say, based on the perspective that I was looking at it, it could be anywhere from two to five miles high. It was real high up in the sky, and its wings were hanging down like this. It was in the north, and its head, I could see by the feathers in its neck, its head was turned toward the west. So lightning flashed and I saw it, and then of course it went dark. So I tapped [his wife] on the leg, and I said, "Look!" Lightning flashed again and there it was again. A second time. So then the third time the lightning flashed and she saw it completely, the same thing. And the fourth time the lightning flashed it wasn't there anymore. I could see its feathers, each individual feather in it. […] Then I saw another image of it again about two years later, but this time it was made up of cloud switches, again, very closely associated with the Thunderbirds, because they […] travel behind the clouds. But this Thunderbird was in flight and it was made up of clouds, and it was in the middle of the day. […] You can't have that [the Thunder] as a personal guide. You can have its messengers or its associates, but not it. It's too far beyond us" (1998).

The Wakinyan is associated with several natural objects, such as the swallow, the dragonfly. His favoured tree is cedar. Standing Bear wrote that whenever a storm threatened to overwhelm a camp, the "mothers and grandmothers in every tipi put cedar leaves on the coals and their magic kept danger away" (1933: 195).² One man (a Thunder-dreamer or Heyoka) showed me a cedar tree near his house. He told me that whenever it stormed a heyoka can protect himself by sheltering under the cedar tree. He said that the tree protected him from harm (1998). Others talked of the imperative to enact dreams of Thunder in public or else dire consequences would befall them, usually death by lightning. The Lakota George Bushotter wrote:

"[Heyokas] used to dream about the Thunder-beings […] and in those dreams the Heyoka man or woman made promises to the Thunder-beings. If the dreamers kept their promises, it was thought that the Thunder-beings helped them to obtain whatever things they desired; but if they broke their promises, they were sure to be killed by the Thunder-beings during some storm. For this reason the Heyoka members worshipped the Thunder-beings, whom they honored, speaking of them as wakan" (in Dorsey 1894: 471).³

But because Wakinyan is a powerful thing, and to be associated with it means forever being held within its power, building up the courage to enact a vision can take many years, sometimes decades. When a person finally decides to do so, he or she must perform the Kettle Dance, a ritual that still takes place in small communities on the reservations and which involves plunging one's arms into boiling water and keeping them there until one has retrieved the head and other choice pieces of a ceremonial puppy.

Some Lakota have described the existence of four Wakinyan, each of whom resides in each quarter of the cosmological universe. Pond wrote:

"By some of the wakan men it is said that there are four varieties of the form of their external manifestation [the Wakinyan]. In essence, however they are but one. One of the varieties is black, with a long beak, and has four joints in his wing. Another is yellow, without any beak at all, with wings like the first, except that he has six quills in each wing. The third is scarlet, and remarkable chiefly for having eight joints in each of its enormous pinions. The fourth is blue and globular in form, and it is destitute of both eyes and ears" (1864: 41-42).⁴

Maka, the Earth, is spoken of in everyday discourse as Ina Maka (Mother Earth), but more usually in a ritual context as Unci (Grandmother) Maka to denote the earth's antiquity and thus wisdom. Maka also denotes a season, half a year, a year, winter or summer, and in this respect it is more commonly referred to as omaka.

Of Wi, or Sun, Walker wrote: "His domain is the spirit world and the regions under the world. […] Daily He makes His journey above the domain of the Sky and at night He rests with His people in the regions under the world and there communes with his comrade, the Buffalo" (1917: 81). As the earth is the symbol of fertility, so the sun is also the symbol of creativity because he carries within him the power to create and nurture life. This generative principle is extended to the buffalo, but also the eagle - two associative beings of the sun according to certain research participants.

Notes::

• 1 - James R. Walker. 1917. "The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota." Anthropological Papers. 16 (2): 51-221. New York: American Museum of Natural History.
• 2 - Luther Standing Bear. 1933. Land of the Spotted Eagle. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.
• 3 - James O. Dorsey. 1894. A Study of Siouan Cults. Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report II. 351-544. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution.
• 4 - Gideon H. Pond. 1864. "Dakota Superstitions." Minnesota Historical Society Collections. 2 (3): 175-190. 2d ed., 1881.