Lakota Flute Legend
man went out to hunt. Meat was scarce, and the people in his camp were hungry. He found the tracks of an elk and followed
them for a long time. The elk, wise and swift, is the one who owns the love charm. If a man posesses Elk Medicine, the girl he
likes can't help sleeping with him. This young man I am talking about had no Elk Medicine.
After many hours he finally sighted his game. He was skilled with bow and arrows, and had a fine new bow and quiver full of
arrows. Yet the elk always managed to stay just out of range, leading him on and on. The young man was so intent on following
his prey that he hardly noticed where he went. When night came he found himself deep inside a thick forest. The tracks had disappeared, and so had the elk, and there was no moon. He realised that he was lost and that it was too dark to find his way out. Luckily, he came upon a stream with cool clear water. He had been careful enough to bring a hide bag of wasna, dried meat pounded with berries and kidney fat, strong food that will keep a man going for a few days. After he had drunk and eaten, he rolled himself into his fur robe, propped his back against a tree, and tried to rest. But he couldn't sleep, the forest was full of strange noises; the cries of night animals, the hooting owls, and the groaning of trees in the wind. It was as if he heard these sounds for the first time.
Suddenly there was an entirely new sound, of a kind that neither he nor anyone else had ever heard before. It was mournful and ghost like. It made him afraid, so much so that he drew his robe tightly around himself and reached for his bow to make sure it was properly strung. On the other hand, the sound was like a song, sad but beautiful, full of love, hope and yearning. Then before he knew it, he was alseep. He dreamed that the bird called Wagnuka, the Redheaded Woodpecker, appeared singing the strangely beautiful song and telling him, "follow me and I will teach you ! "
When the hunter awoke, the sun was already high. On a branch of the tree against which he was leaning, he saw a redheaded woodpecker. The bird flew away to another tree, and another, but never very far, looking back all the time at the young man as if to say, "Come on !!" Then once more he heard that wonderful song, and his heart yearned to find the singer. Flying toward the sound, leading the hunter, the bird flitted through the leaves, while its bright red top made it easy to follow. At last it lighted on a Cedar Tree and began hammering on a branch, making a noise like the fast beating of a small drum. Suddenly there was a gust of wind, and again the hunter heard the beautiful sound right above him.
Then he discovered that the sound came from the dead branch that the woodpecker was tapping his beak on. He realised also that it was the wind that made the sound as it whistled through the hole the bird had drilled.
"Kola, friend" said the hunter, "Let me take this branch home, you can make yourself another one !"
He took the branch, a hollow piece of wood filled with woodpecker holes that was about the length of his forearm. He walked back to the village bringing no meat, but happy all the same.
In his tipi the young man tried to make the branch sing for him. He blew on it, he waved it around, but no sound came. It made him sad, he wanted so much to hear that wonderful new sound. He purified himself in the sweat lodge and climbed to the top of a lonely hill. There, resting with his back against a large rock, he fasted, going without food or water for four days and nights, crying for a vision which would tell him how to make the branch sing. In the middle of the fourth night, wagnuka, the bird with the bright red top appeared saying, "Watch me," turning himself into a man, showing the hunter how to make the branch sing, saying again and again, "Watch this now," and in his dream the young man watched and observed very carefully.
When he awoke, he found a cedar tree, he broke off a branch,. and working many hours, hollowed it out with a bowstring drill, just as he had seen the woodpecker do in his dream. He whittled the branch into the shape of a bird with a long neck and an open beak. He painted the top of the bird's head with washasha, the sacred red colour. He prayed, he smoked the branch up with incense of burning sage, cedar and sweetgrass. He fingered the holes as he had seen the man-bird do in his vision, meanwhile blowing softly into the mouthpiece. All at once, there was the song, ghost like and beautiful beyond words, drifting all the way to the village, where the people were astounded and joyful to hear it. With the help of the wind and the woodpecker, the young man had brought them the first flute.
In the village lived an itanchan, a big chief. This intanchan had a daughter who was beautiful, but also very proud, and convinced that there was no young man good enough for her. Many had come courting, but she had sent them all away. Now, the hunter who had made the flute decided that she was just the woman for him. Thinking of her, he composed a special song, and one night standing behind a tall tree, he played it on his siyotanka in hopes that it might have a charm to make her love him.
All at once the wicincilla heard it. She was sitting in her father's tipi eating buffalo hump meat and tongue, and feeling good. She wanted to stay there, in the tipi by the fire, but her feet wanted to go outside. She pulled back, but her feet pulled her forward, and the feet won. Her head said "Go slow, go slow!" but the feet said, "faster, faster !" She saw the young man standing in the moonlight, she heard the flute. Her head said, "don't go to him, he's poor," but her feet said, "go, run!" and again the feet prevailed.
So they stood face to face. The girl's head told her to be silent, but her feet told her to speak, and speak she did, saying, "Koshkalak, young man, I am yours altogether." So they lay down together, the young man and the wicincilla under the one blanket.
Later she told him, "Koshkalaka, warrior, I like you. Let your parents send a gift to my father, the chief. No matter how small, it will be accepted. Let your father speak for you to my father. Do it soon! Do it now !"
And so the two fathers quickly agreed to the wishes of their children. The proud wicincilla became the hunters wife, and he himself became a Great Chief. All the other young men had heard and seen what the flute did for the hunter, soon they too began to whittle cedar branches into the shape of bird's heads with long necks and open beaks. The beautiful love music travelled from tribe to tribe and made young girls feet go where they shouldn't.
And that's how the flute was brought to the people, thanks to the cedar, the woodpecker and this young man, who shot no elk, but knew how to listen.
