Tobacco Teachings

 

• Sacredness of Tobacco (Dakota, Nakoda, Lakota beliefs)

• In respect of all the tribes, we each have our own story of how we got the gift of tobacco.

• Please note; references to the pipe is in conjunction with tobacco.

• It is said that the pipe and instructions for its use were given to the people by White Buffalo Calf Woman, and the narrative by which the   were taught to pray with the pipe by this messenger from the spiritual realm holds a paramount place in Lakota narrative tradition.

• Today, Arvol Looking Horse, a Lakota man living in South Dakota, is the nineteenth-generation keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, which is integrally related to the fortune and well-being of the Lakota people.

• Other Lakotas, Dakotas and Nakodas are also pipe carriers: stewards entrusted with the care of particular ceremonial and personal pipes.

 

Original Tobacco

 

The best published account of aboriginal tobacco- culture is that given to G. L. Wilson by Buffalobird- woman, an old member of the Hidatsa tribe. The Hidatsa raised a different species of tobacco from the eastern Indians (N. quadrivalvis) , and their methods were somewhat different.

 

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The Mandans, like the other village tribes of the upper Missouri River Valley such as the Hidatsa, and Arikara, raised corn, beans, sunflowers, tobacco, pumpkins, and squash. These tribes produced not only enough agricultural products for their own use, but also a substantial surplus which was traded to other tribes, and later to the Europeans and Americans. This was the original source of tobacco for the plains tribes.

Tobacco is also used as offerings when picking medicine, harvesting food such as animals, birds, fish  and  berries, when offering protocol and when praying for various things.

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"With this sacred pipe you will walk upon the Earth; for the Earth is your Grandmother and Mother, and She is sacred. Every step that is taken upon Her should be as a prayer. The bowl of this pipe is of red stone; it is the Earth. Carved in the stone and facing the center is this buffalo calf who represents all the four-leggeds (the animals) who live upon your Mother. The stem of the pipe is of wood, and this represents all that grows upon the Earth. And these twelve feathers which hang here where the stem fits into the bowl are from Wanbli Galeshka, the Spotted Eagle, and they represent the eagle and all the wingeds ones of the air. All these people, and all the things of the Universe, are joined to you who smoke the pipe - all send their voices to Wakan-Tanka, the Great Spirit. When you pray with this pipe, you pray for and with everything.“

 

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