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The Heart of Everything
 "We have maps of the past. Not a history in the way that
most of us understand history, but places... we can identify with in
terms of time and experience. 'Oh, yes,' my grandmother would say,
'yes, we were there, we were there in the Black
Hills at one time. We know about Zoei, Devils
Tower.' And she said it, you know, as if she had been there. And I
think that in her mind's eye, it was, it was there and very clearly
defined."
N. Scott Momaday
The arrival of the horse in the early 1700s had allowed the
Kiowas to migrate eastward from the Rocky Mountains out onto the Great
Plains. They claimed as their own the best winter hunting grounds, the
Black Hills, and its landmarks became part of their religion. But by
the early 1800s, new people had arrived from the east, challenging the
Kiowas for the Black Hills. They were the Cheyenne. And behind them
came the Lakota -- known by whites as the Sioux.
 "The Black Hills have around them in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century this incredible swirl of people. People
fighting, contesting for buffalo grounds. And the driving figures in
all this are always going to be the Lakotas. The Lakotas are pushing
other people out, the Lakotas are spreading west after the herds, the
Lakotas are the people in motion. The Lakotas weren't always there, but
they make the Black Hills the center of their world."
Richard White
 "Our name for the Black Hills is Wahmunka
Oganunka Inchante. Inchante is 'the heart of.' Wahmunka Oganunka I
translate 'the heart of everything that is,' everything material,
everything spiritual. It is the center of the universe.
 "We were a warrior society, and that's very
much a part of our culture. We have an expression that whoever didn't
fear us, hated us, and we took great pride in the fact that everyone
either hated us or feared us. The Cree people in their stories would
say, 'When the Crow were coming to fight, we sent our little boys to
fight. When the Mandan were coming, we sent the old men. When the Sioux
were coming, we painted our faces for death and prepared to die.'"
Charlotte Black Elk
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