Sacred Pipe Research Articles

Jordon PAPER, Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion, Moscow, Idaho: The University of Idaho Press. 161 pages, U.S. $29.95 (paper)

Jordon PAPER, Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion, Moscow, Idaho: The University of Idaho Press. 161 pages, U.S. $29.95 (paper). An article from journal Culture (Volume 9, Number 2, 1989, pp. 3-104), on Érudit.

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson

Reviewed by: Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson Lori Burlingame Joe Jackson, Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016. 599 pp. Cloth, $30. Jackson's biography is an epic, comprehensively researched historical and sociopolitical account of the life of Black Elk (1863–1950), revered and iconic Oglala Lakota visionary and healer. Born on the cusp of the most turbulent period of change in Native North American history, Black Elk bore witness to his people's unimaginable losses and to their incredible story of strength and "survivance." Black Elk's 1872 vision of the sacred hoop and the restoration of balance haunted him; he strove to understand it and felt a sacred responsibility to honor and preserve it, which is why he shared his story with poet John Neihardt. Jackson's narrative begins with the first encounter between Black Elk and Neihardt and then moves chronologically through the events of Black Elk's life as they converge with pivotal moments in Native history. Black Elk killed a soldier at the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn, where Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were defeated. He bore witness to escalating tensions between the Lakotas and Whites, the theft of his people's sacred lands, the killing of his second cousin Crazy Horse in 1877, and the near extinction of the buffalo. Because of his powerful vision, Black Elk became a healer and performed traditional ceremonies. He and his people suffered the hardships of reservation life at Pine Ridge, where increasingly the US government and the Catholic Church worked to outlaw Lakota traditions and ceremonies, like the Sun Dance. From 1886 to 1888 Black Elk performed with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in England. Jackson explores Black Elk's missing of the ship home, his injury while working in Joe Shelley's Western Wilds of America Show, and his relationship with a Parisian woman. He returned home in 1889, just prior to the Sioux Ghost Dance. [End Page 459] Jackson narrates in inspiring detail Black Elk's courage in charging at soldiers while under intense fire, thus enabling some fellow Lakotas who were captive to escape during the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. In 1904 Black Elk was baptized in the Catholic Church, after having previously clashed with Jesuit priests over his work as a traditional Lakota healer. Jackson delineates Black Elk's conflicted relationship with Christianity; he worked as a catechist for over twenty years but as early as 1923 began to practice traditional ways again and from 1936 to 1945 managed the Duhamel Indian Pageant at the Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns. Black Elk's son, Ben, was a student at the Carlisle Boarding School, and both Ben and Neihardt passed away in 1973, the year of the Siege of Wounded Knee. Jackson documents the close relationship between the Black Elk and Neihardt families, as well as Black Elk's connection with Joseph Epes Brown, recorder and editor of The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (1953). Particularly poignant is Jackson's account of Black Elk's 1931 climbing of Harney Peak, the last mountain in his vision; while he was praying for his people there, it began to rain—perhaps a sign to Black Elk, a thunder dreamer, that his prayers had been heard. Jackson's biography is colorful and thoroughly engaging; readers will have a hard time putting it down. Every topic raised, from Black Elk's heyoka ceremony to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, is exhaustively addressed, and while some topics examined, like the Whitechapel murders, might be viewed as tangents, they are all connected to a deeper understanding of the historical circumstances that shaped Black Elk's life. Featuring a user-friendly organizational structure, Jackson's text includes a listing and description of key historical figures and maps of places discussed, photographs, English names of Lakota months, and a timeline of events. A premise of Jackson's biography is that Neihardt endeavored to the extent possible to be true to Black Elk's voice, even as he employed poetic license in writing Black Elk...

New Light on Black Elk and The Sacred Pipe

This article provides new information that will oblige scholars to reassess the legacy of Black Elk (1863–1950), including excerpts from recently discovered unpublished letters written by Joseph Epes Brown while he was living with the Lakota holy man (1947–49). The author provides insights into Brown's personal philosophy and a clearer context for the editorial role he played in recording The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Brown's letters also help to illuminate Black Elk's role in attempting to restore the sacred “religion of the Pipe” among the Sioux and to clarify controversies that include Black Elk's dual participation in Catholicism.

Allan Houser, an American master: (Chiricahua Apache, 1914-1994)

Allan Houser (Haozous, in his native language) was a Chiricahua Apache, whose family once belonged to Geronimo's guerrilla band. After the remnants of this group were released in 1913 from decades of internment by the United States Government, the artist's family moved to a farm in Oklahoma, where Houser was born in 1914. In his teens, Houser attended the Santa Fe School, where he first studied art. Although immersed in Apache tradition, as a student Houser was fascinated by art from all over the world, and he resisted the school's attempt to force him to work in what was considered the proper American style of flat forms, bright colors, and Indian subjects. Instead, he mastered a number of styles, from straightforward representation to abstraction, and throughout his career remained alert to developments in the work of his contemporaries. Houser's sculpture, considered his finest work, can be seen in many collections both in the United States and abroad. Among his most famous works are Sacred Rain Arrow, which welcomed athletes to the 2002 Winter Olympics, and Offering of the Sacred Pipe, which was created for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. In 1992, Houser because the first Native American to receive the United States' highest art award, the National Medal of Arts. A retrospective exhibition of Houser's work will inaugurate the Smithsonian's Museum of the American in September 2004, and will surely generate new interest in this truly American artist.

Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion . JORDAN PAPER

<i>Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion</i> . JORDAN PAPER

Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion

Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion

: Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion . Jordan Paper.

: Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion . Jordan Paper.

Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and the North American Religion. By Jordon Paper. Edmonton, Alberta: The University of Alberta Press, 1989. 161 pp. $29.95 paper

Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and the North American Religion. By Jordon Paper. Edmonton, Alberta: The University of Alberta Press, 1989. 161 pp. $29.95 paper

Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion

In this brilliant exploration of the history, mythology, ritual and symbolism of the sacred pipe, author Jordan Paper breaks new ground in assessing the importance of the pipe in Native American religion. Offering Smoke provides a dazzling introduction to an aspect of Native American culture heretofore never explored in such depth or with such careful regard for the religious and cultural sensitivities so vital for genuine understanding.

The Sacred Pipe: The Historical Context of Contemporary Pan-Indian Religion

Journal Article The Sacred Pipe: The Historical Context of Contemporary Pan-Indian Religion Get access Jordan D. Paper Jordan D. Paper Jordan D Paper is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at York University, 4700 Keele Street, North York, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LVI, Issue 4, Winter 1988, Pages 643–665, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LVI.4.643 Published: 01 December 1988

The Sacred Pipe in American Indian Religions

The Sacred Pipe in American Indian Religions

The Lakota Sacred Pipe: Its Tribal Use and Religious Philosophy

The Lakota Sacred Pipe: Its Tribal Use and Religious Philosophy

Symbols: Meat for the Soul in Cheyenne Myth and Lakota Ritual

JU L IA N C. R IC E Florida Atlantic University Symbols: Meat for the Soul in CheyenneMyth and Lakota Ritual Among native North American religions, those of the Lakota (Sioux) and Cheyenne have transformation symbols which especially resemble a developmental process found in such mystical systems as Hinduism, Bud­ dhism, Sufism, Christianity, and the Kabbalah.1 Fortunately, a great deal of clear, detailed English transcription of their ritualized drama and fiction isextant.2 It isperhaps ironic that more contemporary Americans are likely to be familiar with the intricacies of a relatively remote form of mysticism than with an equally mature and complex expression, still living on this continent. It is equally ironic that readers who praise ambiguity, open endings, and “process” should be unaware that their theories were taken for granted by “aboriginal” storytellers and listeners. The Lakota and the Cheyenne value symbols highly, not simply for what they mean or point toward, but as the means by which the soul grows and changes. In Western culture, Christ is an incarnation of the ineffable 1The major source of information on Lakota rituals, in this study, is Black Elk, The Sacred Pipe, recorded and ed. Joseph Epes Brown (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971). Subsequent references will be cited by parenthetical page numbers in the text. 2Most of the Cheyenne stories, interpreted here, are found in George Bird Grinnell, By Cheyenne Campfires (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1971). Subsequent refer­ ences will be cited by parenthetical page numbers in the text. The other major source of information on Cheyenne myth and ritual is Peter J. Powell, Sweet Medicine: The Con­ tinuing Role of the Sacred Arrows, the Sun Dance, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History, 2 vols. (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1969). 106 Western American Literature in human form, and serves as the channel through which Grace enters the world. He is also the Word, or symbolic language, which communicates the wordless. His words and deeds are the agents of transformation for those who are born again by their miraculous healing power. In the Christ story and the Christian tradition, many subsidiary symbols tell the story of the soul’s transformation, but the words and deeds of Christ are the central symbol. With the Lakota and Cheyenne, certain symbol-generating sym­ bols, as agents of transformation, also take precedence. For the Lakota, the sacred pipe dominates most of their rituals. Among the Cheyennes, the Buffalo cap and the Medicine Arrows are the most sacred symbols. These gifts are conferred, like the preaching of the Word, by sacred persons, who represent the ongoing creation of the human soul, individually and col­ lectively. Arrows convert game into food. “Meaningless” raw material becomes the means of creating new life. Arrows are therefore a symbol of the reli­ gious experience that converts an unconscious person into the spiritual food which can nurture and enlighten others. The learning of archery forms the symbolic conclusion of a number of Cheyenne stories. It is the final gift of the prophet, Sweet Medicine, or Sweet Root Standing. The name suggests the source of all creative development, both the male and female principles, and especially the idea of spiritual nourishment, since the “sweet root” stimulates the flow of mother’smilk. The teller of stories about Sweet Root sprinkled sacred sage upon a hot coal and purified his body in the smoke before beginning. Purification, so that one’s thoughts, deeds, and words express only the essential, is common to Indian rituals, where fire is often the means of consuming the superfluous. Certain sacred movements then represent the Creation of man and the earth. The Creator isnow considered to be the witness to this repetition of his work, so that an abstracted con­ sciousness is present in the psyches of those who are enacting the Creation.3 Like many culture heroes, Sweet Root is an orphan. The creative soul is free of conventional authority and identity. He is raised by a poor old 3The effects of being a witness to the continuing Creation, rather than an autono­ mous actor within it, are described by Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of non-attach­ ment in the Hindu Vedas, “The individual, through...

A Ceremony For The Preparation Of The Offering Cloths For Presentation To The Sacred Calf Pipe Of The Teton Sioux

The following ceremony, according to my informants, must be performed each and every time an offering is made to the Sacred Calf Pipe of the Teton Dakota. When it is completed the Sacred Pipe Bundl...

: The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux . Joseph Epes Brown.

: The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux . Joseph Epes Brown.

The Sacred Pipe. Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux

The Sacred Pipe. Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux