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