The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

The Sacred Hoop: A Contemporary Perspective
1. Mythic: 1. narratives that deal with metaphysical,
spiritual, and cosmic occurrences that recount the spiritual past
and the “mysteries” of the tribe; 2. sacred story. The Word in its
cosmic, creative sense. This usage follows the literary meaning
rather than the common or vernacular meaning of “fictive” or
“not real narrative dealing with primitive, irrational
explanations of the world.” 3. translational.
2. Hyemehosts Storm, Seven Arrows (New York: Harper and
Row, 1972), p. 4.
3. John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1961), p. 35.
4. Frederick Turner III, Introduction, Geronimo: His Own
Story, by Geronimo, ed. S. M. Barrett (New York: Ballantine,
1978), p. 7.
5. D’Arcy McNickle, Native American Tribalism: Indian
Survivals and Renewals (New York: Oxford University Press,
1973), pp. 12–13.
6. Alice Marriott and Carol K. Rachlin, American Indian
Mythology (New York: New American Library, 1972), p. 39.
7. Marriott and Rachlin, American Indian Mythology, p. 39.
8. Natalie B. Curtis, The Indians’ Book: Songs and Legends
of the American Indians (New York: Dover, 1968), pp. 8, 7.
9. From a prayer of the Night Chant of the Navajo people.
10. I am making this inference from the account of the
appearance of White Buffalo Cow Woman to Kablaya as
recounted by Black Elk in The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s
Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, ed. Joseph Eyes
Brown (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971), pp. 67–100.
11. T. Kroeber and Robert F. Heizer, Almost Ancestors: The
First Californians, ed. F. David Hales (San Francisco: Sierra
Club, 1968), pp. 28–30.