Introduction: Let the Wind Blow Through You
A playground dispute in the fourth grade concluded with a barrage of epithets hurled at me, each one more stinging than the one before. I was called every derogatory name for Indians that two white fourth-grade classmates could remember. Stunned, I could think of nothing equally hurtful to throw back.
That evening, still hurting from the insults, I told my grandfather about the incident.
“Words can hurt,” he said, “but only if you let them. They called you bad names. Were you changed into the things they called you?”
“No,” I replied.
“You cannot forget what they said any more than you cannot feel the wind when it blows. But if you learn to let the wind blow through you, you will take away its power to blow you down. If you let the words pass through you, without letting them catch on your anger or pride, you will not feel them.”
My grandfather’s wise counsel has helped me through many storms in life. How his quiet, yet powerful comments influenced me, and still do, is one of my favorite stories. When I tell young people how my grandfather’s words helped me, I can feel those words going into their hearts.
Stories and storytelling were all around me in my childhood. The storytellers were my Lakota grandparents—both maternal and paternal—and others of their generation. Strangely enough, these elders didn’t seem old to me, but I did have a sense that they’d been around a long time and knew everything.
If the storytellers were old, their stories were much older. The Grandmas and Grandpas were the living repositories for all those wonderful stories told them by their elders from generations before. The stories I heard and learned provide lessons that I can apply in the present; but they also connect me to the past—to a way of life that has endured far longer than I can imagine—and to the people who walked the land and left old trails to follow. And because I and others like me were, and are, hearing and remembering the stories, that way of life will remain viable through us..
I never tired of the stories, and I would ask to hear my fa vorites again and again, my version of watching a movie over and over. Those stories were not just of humans, or “two-leggeds,” they were about other kinds of people as well: the elk people, the bear people, the bird people, and so on. And they were about the land. I never heard a story that didn’t involve the land in some way.
Everything in those stories is equally alive and able to affect everything else. A winter storm, for example, could have a personality; it could be impatient, pushy, broad shouldered. A cottonwood sapling could whine and argue; the summer wind could be persuasive, enticing all the blades of grass to bend and sway in the same direction at the same moment. These mechanisms in Lakota storytelling exist because the storytellers believe all things are related. I therefore look at winter storm clouds gathering or feel the wind on my face and feel connected to them. I don’t regard them as something merely to plague two-leggeds.
Stories entertained and informed, but, of course, that was only their obvious purpose. Tales and allegories told by Lakota elders very directly enabled an entire culture to survive because they carried the culture within them. The stories I learned growing up were consciously told again and again to teach me about life—my purpose in it and my path through it. These stories are certainly not random; each illustrates a virtue that, within Lakota culture, is essential to balance and happiness.
To the Lakota, virtues such as humility, respect, sacrifice, and honesty carry a different weight and substance than they do in western culture. For us these qualities are not so much elusive goals as they are essential parts of everyday life. They are instilled in us as firmly and as specifically as American courtesies like saying “please” and “thank you,” or “bless you” after someone sneezes.
I knew growing up that at some point I was supposed to be the things I learned in the stories: compassionate, honorable, and brave, and so forth. I knew this because the storytellers lived the lessons they imparted in their stories, and they practiced what they preached: They were compassionate, they were honorable, and they were brave and wise.
The virtues espoused by the stories in this book were and are the foundation and moral sustenance of Lakota culture. There is nothing more important. It isn’t that we don’t care about physical comfort or material possessions, it is because we don’t measure ourselves or others by those things. We believe we are measured by how well, or how little, we manifest virtue in our life’s journey.
When life for us was forever altered by the arrival of Europeans—when entire populations were devastated by disease, alcohol, war, and dispossession—we survived by living by the virtues we learned from our stories. We relied on being the kind of people our stories told us our ancestors had been, and thereby we remained true to ourselves and to them, and we are still surviving.
By providing both knowledge and inspiration, stories continue to strengthen Lakota society and enable us to cope with our world and the times we live in. Stories of virtue are at the core of cultural renewal for each new generation. But even more importantly they reach us individually as men and women, young and old.
The stories herein are intended to provide an experiential insight into our tradition, customs, and values. Throughout the ages they have been the lessons that have shaped and transformed our lives, and they still have the power to do so. If you are not careful, they may do that for you. While they will not turn the non-Lakota into a Lakota, they have much to offer anyone who is curious about life. They are our gift to the world, if you will. They rise out of our triumphs, our defeats, our strengths, and our weaknesses. They are not guarded secrets; they are markers on the road of life—the answers soaring across the open prairies of our lives on the winds of wisdom—helping us, perhaps helping you. That, at least, is my prayer.
I, for one, am always ready and willing to recall and retell the stories I have heard. Especially when the wind blows.
Joseph M. Marshall III Sicangu Oglala Lakota