Straddlebug || myBlog 
Subject : Ute Proverb
Date/Time : 8/6/2012 8:50:52 AM
God gives us each a song.
Subject : Kicking Bear
Date/Time : 8/4/2012 10:14:48 AM
Kicking Bear (March 18, 1846–May 28, 1904), also called Matȟó Wanáȟtake, was an Oglala Lakota who became a band chief of the Miniconjou Lakota Sioux.
He fought in several battles with his brother, Flying Hawk and first cousin, Crazy Horse during the War for the Black Hills, including Battle of the Greasy Grass. Also a holy man, he was active in the Ghost Dance religious movement of 1890, and had traveled with fellow Lakota Short Bull to visit the movement’s leader, Wovoka (a Paiute holy man living in Nevada). The three Lakota men were instrumental in bringing the movement to their people who were living on reservations in South Dakota.
Following the murder of Sitting Bull, Kicking Bear and Short Bull were imprisoned at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Upon their release in 1891, both men joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, and toured with the show in Europe. That experience was humiliating to him. After a year-long tour, Kicking Bear returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation to care for his family. In March 1896, Kicking Bear traveled to Washington, D.C. as one of three Sioux delegates taking grievances to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He made his feelings known about the drunken behavior of traders on the reservation, and asked that Native Americans have more ability to make their own decisions. While in Washington, Kicking Bear agreed to have a life mask made of himself. The mask was to be used as the face of a Sioux warrior to be displayed in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. A gifted artist, he painted his account of the Battle of Greasy Grass at the request of artist Frederic Remington in 1898, more than twenty years after the battle.
Kicking Bear was buried with the arrowhead as a symbol of the ways he so dearly desired to resurrect when he died on May 28, 1904. His remains are buried somewhere in the vicinity of Manderson-White Horse Creek.
Subject : Yurok Proverb
Date/Time : 8/2/2012 10:28:19 AM
When you die, you will be spoken of as those in the sky, like the stars.
Subject : Yurok: Ocean Story
Date/Time : 8/2/2012 10:27:47 AM
How Thunder and Earthquake Made Ocean
Thunder lived at Sumig.
One day he said, “How shall the people live there is just prairie there?
Let us place the ocean there.” He said to Earthquake, “I want to have
water there, there so that the people may live. Otherwise they will have
nothing to live on.” He said to Earthquake, “What do you think?”
Earthquake thought. “That is true,” he said. “There should be water there.
Far off I see it. I see the water. It is at Opis.
There are salmon there and water.”
“Go,” said Thunder. “Go with Kingfisher, the one
who sits there by the water. Go and get water at Opis.
Get water that is to come here.”
Then the two of them went. Kingfisher and Earthquake went
to see the water. They went to get the water at Opis. They had
two abalone shells that Thunder had given to them.
“Take these shells,” Thunder had said.
“Collect the water in them.”
First Kingfisher and Earthquake went to the north end of the world.
There Earthquake looked around. “This will be easy,” he said.
“It will be easy for me to sink the land.” Then Earthquake ran around.
He ran around and the ground sank.
It sank there at the north end of the world.
Then Kingfisher and Earthquake started for Opis.
They went to the place at the end of the water. They made the ground
sink behind them as they went. At the Opis they saw all kinds of animals
and fish that could be eaten there in the water at Opis.
Then they took water in the abalone shells.
“No we will go to the south end of the world,” said Earthquake.
“We will go there and look for water. Thunder, who was at Sumig,
will help us breaking down the trees. The water will extend all the way
to the south end of the world. There will be salmon and fish of all kinds
and seals in the water.”
Now Kingfisher and Earthquake came back to Sumig.
They saw that Thunder had broken down the trees.
Together the three of them went north.
As they went together they kept sinking the ground.
The Earth quaked and quaked water flowed over it as Kingfisher
and Earthquake poured it from their abalone shells. Kingfisher emptied
his shell and it filled the ocean halfway to the north end of the world.
Earthquake emptied his shell and it filled the ocean the rest of the way.
As they filled in the ocean, the creatures which would be food swarmed
into the water. The seals came as if they were thrown in handfuls.
Into the water they came, swimming toward shore. Earthquake sank the
land deeper to make gullies and the whales came swimming through the
gullies where the water was deep enough for them to travel.
The salmon came running through the water.
Now all the land animals, the deer and elk, the foxes and minks,
the bear and others had gone inland. Now the water creatures were there.
Now Thunder and Kingfisher and Earthquake looked at the ocean.
“This is enough,” They said. “Now the people will have enough to live on.
Everything that is needed is in water.”
So it is that the prairie became ocean. It is so because Thunder wished it so.
It is so because Earthquake wished it so. All kinds of creatures are in the ocean
before us because Thunder and Earthquake wished the people to live.
Subject : Sauk Proverb
Date/Time : 8/1/2012 11:48:36 AM
Sharing and giving are the ways of God.
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