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I haven’t been able to go paddling since last December so I sit by my waterfall in the back yard, remembering the trips of the past. I would like to share with you the journey to see Miracle, the white buffalo.
The Legend of the White Buffalo
One summer a long time ago, the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Sioux came together and camped. The sun was strong and the people were starving for there was no game.
Two young men went out to hunt. Along the way, the two men met a beautiful young woman dressed in white who floated as she walked. One man had bad desires for the woman and tried to touch her, but was consumed by a cloud and turned into a pile of bones.
The woman spoke to the second young man and said, "Return to your people and tell them I am coming." This holy woman brought a wrapped bundle to the people. She unwrapped the bundle giving to the people a sacred pipe and teaching them how to use it to pray. "With this holy pipe, you will walk like a living prayer," she said. The holy woman told the Sioux about the value of the buffalo, the women and the children. "You are from Mother Earth," she told the women, "What you are doing is as great as the warriors do."
Before she left, she told the people she would return. As she walked away, she rolled over four times, turning into a white female buffalo calf. It is said after that day the Lakota honored their pipe, and buffalo were plentiful. (from John Lame Deer's telling in 1967).
Many believe that the buffalo calf, Miracle, born August 20, 1994 symbolizes the coming together of humanity into a oneness of heart, mind, and spirit.
"American Legend is made flesh" No longer mythical White Buffalo a beacon to Plains tribes......
from the Houston Chronicle, Sept. 24, 1994
Miracle stands in her mother’s shadow, her champagne coat, ghostlike against the chocolate-colored herd. She is a mat of fuzz on a newborn frame. Yet Miracle is rarely among land-roving beasts. She is the mythical White Buffalo - symbol of hope, rebirth and unity for the Great Plains tribes.
Searching for Miracle will take you down long gravel path on the Heider family farm in south central Wisconsin. Three thousand pilgrims made the walk down the coarse stones earlier this month hoping to catch a glimpse of Miracle. Every day more come from all corners of the country. One man came from Ireland.
If all of this sounds a little crazy to you, consider this: The chance of a white buffalo being born makes your odds of winning the lottery look good, Miracles likelihood, according to the numbers from the National Buffalo Association, is somewhere in the range of 6 billion. Consider also that the only other documented white buffalo this century died in 1959. His name was Big Medicine. He lived for 36 years.
Now, there is Miracle, the infant calf born to a 1,100 -pound mother and now deceased father on Dave and Valerie Heider’s farm on the banks of the Rock River. She is a beacon for believers.
My sister and I decided to take a journey to see the white buffalo. But before I left a Cherokee elder said to me. “Son this is not the one. The stars are not right and she needs to be born roaming free not in some white man‘s stock pen.” He gave me a totem to give to her. I put my canoe on top of my truck and headed North to pick up my sister. On the way we camped and I took her on her first canoe ride. The next day she said as I slowed down over every river,” you look at rivers differently when you have been on one.” It is so true. We arrived at the Hieder farm. They had done a good job of walking the line between a religious shrine and a tourist trap. They allowed no pictures to be taken and there was a long fence where the Native Americans had placed their totems . The gift shop had pictures of Miracle and some original native art, but most of the Indian gifts were made by that Japanese tribe.
My sister and I walked to the pen past all the totems and I placed the one that Running Bear had given me on the fence and then my sister and I sat down on a log that was about two feet from the fence. As we sat there four young buffalos came over the hill. One was smaller and almost delicate, if you can call a buffalo delicate. and she was a much lighter brown than the others. The legend states that the buffalo will reappear as a white buffalo and then change into the four colors white, brown black and red and at that time all the tribes will be united as one. She walked over to the fence and lowered her head and looked directly at us. As I looked directly into her huge brown eyes she seem to be telling me “ I don’t like all this attention” and then she bleated at us. My sister said I would like to think that she was trying to tell us something but she was probably bellowing at the bull behind us. As we got up to leave the owner came up to me and asked if I had a medicine pouch. When I said that I did he gave me some of miracles hair. I have carried it in my medicine all the years hoping that the legend would come true.
The genocide in Africa, 9/11, 7/11 have all proved that Miracle was not the white buffalo of the legend but there is a herd on the Sioux res and a herd running free in Yellowstone. Maybe when the next female buffalo is born she will be the one.
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