A Legend of Devil's Tower - Lakota

This is another characteristically tongue-in-cheek tale from Lame
Deer.


Out of the plains of Wyoming rises Devil's Tower. It is really a
rock, visible for hundreds of miles around, an immense cone of
basalt , which seems to touch the clouds. It sticks out of the flat
prairie as if someone had pushed it up from underground. Of course,
Devil's Tower is a white man's name. We have no devil in our beliefs
and got along well all these many centuries without him. You people
invented the devil and, as far as I'm concerned, you can keep him.
But everybody these days knows that towering rock by this name, so
Devil's Tower it is. No use telling you its Indian name.("Grey Horn
Butte" ["He Hota Paha"], - site of the first World Peace and Prayer
gathering, under Chief Arvol Looking Horse.) Most tribes call it bear
rock. There is a reason for that - if you see it, you will notice on
its sheer sides many, many streaks and gashes running straight up and
down, like scratches made by giant claws.

Well, long, long ago, two young Indian boys found themselves lost in
the prairie. You know how it is. They had played shinny ball and
whacked it a few hundred yards out of the village. And then they had
shot their toy bows still farther out into the sagebrush. And then
they had heard a small animal make a noise and had gone to
investigate. They had come to a stream with many colorful pebbles and
followed that for a while. They had come to a hill and wanted to see
what was on the other side. On the other side they saw a herd of
antelope and, of course, had to track them for a while. When they got
hungry and thought it was time to go home, the two boys found that
they didn't know where they were? They started off in the direction
where they thought their village was, but only got farther and
farther away from it. At last they curled up beneath a tree and went
to sleep. They got up the next morning and walked some more, still
headed the wrong way. They ate some wild berries and dug up wild
turnips, found some chokecherries, and drank water from streams. For
three days they walked toward the west. They were footsore, but they
survived. Oh, how they wished that there parents, or aunts or uncles,
or elder brothers and sisters would find them. But nobody did. On the
fourth day the boys suddenly had a feeling that they were being
followed. They looked around and in the distance saw Mato, the bear.
This was no ordinary bear, but a giant grizzly so huge that the two
boys would only make a small mouthful for him, but he had smelled the
boys and wanted that mouthful. He kept coming close, and the earth
trembled as he gathered speed. The boys started running, looking for
a place to hide, but there was no such place and the grizzly was much
much faster than they. They stumbled, and the bear was almost upon
them. They could see his red, wide-open jaws full of enormous, wicked
teeth. They could smell his hot, evil breath. The boys were old
enough to have learned to pray, and they called upon Wakan Tanka, the
Creator: "Tunkashila, Grandfather, have pity, save us."

All at once the earth shook and began to rise. The boys rose with it.
Out of the earth came a cone of rock going up, up until it was more
than a thousand feet high. And the boys were on top of it. Mato the
bear was disappointed to see his meal disappearing into the clouds.
Have I said he was a giant bear? This grizzly was so huge that he
could almost reach to the top of the rock, trying to get up, trying
to get those boys. As he did so, he made big scratches in the sides
of the towering rock. But the stone was too slippery; Mato could not
get up. He tried every spot, every side. He scratched up the rock all
around, but it was no use. The boys watched him wearing himself out,
getting tired, giving up. They finally saw him going away, a huge,
growling, grunting mountain of fur disappearing over the horizon.

The boys were saved. Or were they? How were they to get down? They
were humans, not birds who could fly. Some ten years ago, mountain
climbers tried to conquer Devil's Tower. They had ropes, and iron
hooks called pitons to nail themselves to the rockface, and they
managed to get up. But they couldn't get down. They were marooned on
that giant basalt cone and they had to be taken off in a helicopter.
In the long-ago days the Indians had no helicopters. So how did the
two boys get down? The legend does not tell us, but we can be sure
that the Great Spirit didn't save those boys only to let them perish
of hunger and thirst on the top of the rock. Well, Wanblee, the
eagle, has always been a friend to our people. So it must have been
the eagle that let the boys grab hold of him and carried them safely
back to their village. Or do you know another way?

Told by Lame Deer in Winner, Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, South
Dakota, 1969.