the people, and on the fourth day she came. She spent four days living among the people and teaching them the meaning of the sacred bundle. It contained the first peace pipe and seven sacred ceremonies. The first was the sweat lodge ceremony for purification. The second was the child naming ceremony. The third was for healing, the fourth was the ceremony for the making of relatives, and the fifth was a marriage ceremony. The sixth was the vision quest, an imperative spiritual rite of passage for every Indian man. The seventh ceremony was the Sun Dance, the peoples ceremony for the whole nation.She instructed the people that as long as they performed these ceremonies they would remain caretakers of the land, and that as long as they respected the sacred bundle their people would never die. As she left, she promised that she would return one day for the bundle, which the Lakota still possess and venerate in its sacred location on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. The White Buffalo Calf Woman also made some prophecies before she departed. She said that the birth of a white buffalo calf would be a sign that her return was near, and that she would soon come to purify the world and return spiritual balance and harmony.On August 20, 1994 a white buffalo calf was born on a small farm in Janesville, Wisconsin. The white owner of the farm, Dave Heider, named her Miracle. Since her birth more than 20,000 people have made pilgrimages from near and far to visit, take pictures, pray, and leave offerings of feathers, necklaces, and pieces of colored cloth as well as personal notes. Her owners were forced to copyright both her name and her image to prevent exploitation of the calf. Her birth held tremendous significance for the Lakota for a number of reasons; the circumstances fulfilled several of the White Buffalo Calf Womans prophecies. Shes female, and the bull that sired her died, just as in the prophecy. Though some people wer...
