Review of Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota

Authors

Douglas R. Parks, Indiana University

Date of this Version

1989

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly WINTER 1989. Copyright 1989 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

As early as 1851 the missionary Stephen Return Riggs remarked in the introduction to his grammar and dictionary of Dakota (eastern Sioux) that the shamans used a sacred language unknown to the common people. At the tum of the century the Pine Ridge Reservation physician James R. Walker, a dedicated student of Oglala Sioux ethnography, also referred to a ceremonial language known only to shamans. He, like Riggs and others who have mentioned it, gave only a small number of examples, all common words in the language that had been given different, or occult, meanings in order to obfuscate the shaman's speech. How extensive this "sacred language" was, however, has never been fully documented.