Origin of The Rainbow

"Rainbow over the Fort Pierre National Grasslands" by Greg Latza.
The Origin Of The Rainbow
The Spirits Of All The Flowers
Edited By Dakota Wind
Bismarck, N.D. - From the last snows of winter to the first frost of the next, from the Pasque Flowers and Easter Daisies in the lingering snows of spring to the White and Purple Asters of the cool fall, the native flowers of the open prairie rise from the heart of grandmother earth and beautify the grassy steppe.

The Lakȟóta say that long ago the flowers could speak. Long ago the Pasque Flower conversed with a young man and reassured him that he would receive a vision. They say that the Prairie Rose used to greet the Lakȟóta as they passed by, a shy flower anyway, became forever silent when its greetings were either unheard or unanswered.

They say that long ago, on a bright summer day, when all the flowers were out, dancing and bobbing in the wind with all their bright and beautiful colors, that they flowers were talking to one another about mortality and the hereafter. The Great Spirit listened to their conversation.

“I wonder where we will go with winter comes and we all must die,” said the flowers. “It doesn’t seem fair. We do our share to make grandmother earth a beautiful place to live. Should we not also go to a spirit country of our own?” they asked.

The Great Spirit carefully considered their questions and decided that the flowers would live on and their beauty would be remembered after the winter snows. Now, after a rain, we may look to the sky above and see all the pretty colors of the flowers from the past year making a beautiful rainbow across the heavens. [1]

In the ancient days, they say that the rainbow used to be solid, that one could actually touch the colors. Then one day a boy, in his rush to climb a rainbow, found sure footing and grip enough to climb the rainbow, and so he did. When he reached the top, he fired a blazing arrow to signal the people, but they couldn’t find it. When they searched for the boy, neither could they find him. The spirits kept the arrow and the boy elusive. Whenever they approached the rainbow it too proved elusive.

The Lakȟóta refer to rainbows as Wígmuŋke, or "A Snare." It is said that the wígmuŋke, causes the storm to end by trapping it, so that no more rain can fall. No one points at the wígmuŋke with their fingers, but use their lips or elbows if they gesture to it.

“When a rainbow comes everyone looks at it. But no one points at it. If you point at it you will suffer then. Your finger will grow very large. It gets big. It is bad to point at the rainbow.” Mrs. Amanda Grass, May 15, 1921. [2]

[1] Works Progress Administration. Legends Of The Mighty Sioux. 5th Printing ed. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2008.

[2] Welch Dakota Papers

Autumn Morning On The Northern Plains

An early fall morning at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Autumn Morning On The Northern Plains

A Clean Beginning To A New Day

By Dakota Wind

Missouri River, N.D. - When I went out to start my car this morning, I saw that the sun had not yet arisen. The far horizon was bright orange and pink, the north and south horizon was purple and blue. Most of the sun light was reflected off the clouds in the east from an even more distant sunrise. Because the rising sun was teasing in its great reveal, it seemed like time was frozen in perpetual twilight.

The morning made me think of late fall mornings back on the rez in the days of my youth.

The frost was frozen fast to the windshield of my car. It came off in a couple of passes with the scraper. The frost curled in about it itself like wood shavings. The curls gathered about the top of the window where my scraping stroke ended, there they gradually melted as the windshield warmed the interior.

I scraped in silence. Neighbors had already departed for work. Neighbors’ children had already left for school. My breathing the only sound accompanying the scraping came in puffs. When I was little I used to imagine there was a little fire within me that burned warm. I remember hearing once that long ago, the Lakota thought that the visible breath was also visible spirit. I was never scared that I would lose mine, the fire within somehow kept it close.

I stepped on my freshly shorn lawn cut only a few days ago, and the grass crunched beneath my shoe. The crunch of delicately frozen grass was too great a call to the little boy within me that I stepped some more just for the joy of it and left a trail of crushed steps across the lawn before getting back to my car.

The trees still have some leaves. Indigenous trees like the ancient cottonwood go from shiny green to yellow and then fall. In the summer when the wind blows through the cottonwood the leaves heave in a great constant shush, it’s like the sound of the ocean. The leaves may change color, but after they fall, they continue shushing until snow quiets them, and then the wind changes.

The wind is a constant presence. One can count the number of days without a breeze on one hand. In the summer, you might think that the wind would be a welcome presence on a hot day, but it blows the heat around like a furnace. In the fall, if anything can possibly carry the smell of cold and winter, it’s the wind. It smells cold and distant, but clean too. Any moisture that the wind carries a hint of always smells clean here on the prairie steppe.

Steam off the river filled the Missouri River valley as far up river and down river as the eye could see. Silent undulating waves of fog cascaded in slow motion in the early quiet. Tendrils of fog gently whipped at the confines of the river bank and a few managed to lick the air above the tree line. As a boy I remember being told the steam off the river like this is the spirit of the river, “The river breathes too,” my grandfather said.

A magpie stirred and took flight in the neighbor’s lawn and I’m reminded instantly that meadowlarks no longer wake me in the early pre-dawn. The magpie alights in a nearby tree giving me a view of its snowy white feathers on midnight black ones. The mix of black and white in a world of dawn color is noble.

The moon sets in a sea of deep azure and grey misty clouds in the western sky. Starlight is gradually snuffed out like a campfire, or a candle. The brightest stars twinkle for a moment or two and then quit for the day.

My car is ready and warm by the time I’m ready to get back in.