All Our Relatives: An Introduction "Life was a glorious thing" "We make bear sounds" Greeting the Sunrise "Our tipis were round like the nests of birds" "The elk walks among the herd" "O Spotted Eagle!" "Do not harm your weaker brothers" "Look around!" "At daybreak, I roam"

Slide 8 of 10 WHISTLING ELK WAS WOUNDED IN BATTLE. His friends brought him home and laid him in his tipi. The medicine men did what they could to cure his wounds, but everyone feared Whistling Elk did not have many more days to live.      As he reclined on his bed, close to death, a kingfisher flew in at the tipi door and perched on the top of the backrest above his head. Uttering his loud rattling call, the kingfisher told him: “Whistling Elk, get up now! Go to the stream. Do as I do: dive down into the water!”      Whistling Elk obeyed the kingfisher, rose from his bed, walked down to the river, and dived in. His wound was cleansed, and soon after that he recovered. "Long ago it was the cottonwood tree who taught us how to make our tipis, for the leaf is an exact pattern of the tipi, and this we learned when some of our old people were watching little children making play houses from these leaves. This too is a good example of how much grown men and women may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss." —Black Elk, Lakota "Some people may think that human beings were the first to dance, but I do not think so. I believe that the birds danced fi rst. I have seen the prairie chicken hold dances as orderly and as well organized as I have seen humans hold." —Standing Bear, Lakota