Helping Hands

     White Elk Woman and Spotted Pony had been friends since they were very young. As a matter of fact, neither of them could remember a time when they had not been in 
one another's lives. They were of the Oglala Sioux Tribe which is part of the great Lakota nation. The girls were blessed with the true gift of perfect friendship - and either of them would have lain her life down for the other if there had been a reason to do so. 

     As girls they had played together every day. They helped each other to finish tasks because a chore shared went twice as fast----and didn't feel like a task at all when 
there was someone to talk and giggle with.

     Spotted pony was a handsome girl-with clear, bronze skin, straight white teeth and hair as dark and sleek as a raven's wing. White Elk Woman was very pretty, too, but 
unusual looking-she was as white as snow, had eyes of the palest blue you can imagine, and silver hair. White Elk Woman was an albino, a coloring that can occur in any race of man or animal. The Sioux thought her blessed, someone touched by the Great Spirit above and marked by the White Buffalo Woman. That is why she was named for the elk; the Sioux consider elk medicine to be very powerful. This strange pale child with eyes like pond ice in January would need powerful medicine just to get 
through the perils of living. It's never easy to be different.

     After the special ceremony of her first moontime, Spotted Pony received an unusual piece of jewelry as a gift from her mother. It was a ring made of Black Hills Gold in the form of two hands clasped together. The hands were joined so tightly, they seemed to be one piece although one was a white, silvery color and the other the sunny, warm color of yellow gold.  When one looked very close, you could see the hands were
on two separate bands. When Spotted Pony turned the rings around, the two different colored bands were clearly defined, and with a little twist and a tug, they came apart. Just as easily as 1-2-3, the rings were rejoined and made one again.

     Spotted Pony was delighted with the gift, she clapped her hands and smiled at her mother.

     " This double ring is White Elk Woman and me! We are 
so close, sometimes we seem to be one person. Thank you, Mother. I love it!"


     One day the girls were picking berries in a clearing when suddenly a mother black bear and her cubs came woofing into the berrypatch. The girls dropped their gathering baskets, and climbed high into a tree. The bears prowled around the clearing, woofing and standing on their hind legs, trying to scare the frightened girls in the tree into falling out. The mother bear was unusually large and she had a bit of a mean streak, too. She unexpectedly charged the small tree, turned sideways and, WHAM!-- she hit the tree with all her weight and strength. 

     White Elk Woman had not been expecting that and was knocked loose from the hold she had on the tree. She flailed wildly with both arms, trying to grab hold of the 
slender trunk again. She was thrown backward on the branch she was sitting on, and screamed as she began to slip from her roost in the tree. Spotted Pony turned loose of her own secure hold on the tree, and grabbed her friend with both hands. She held on to her, kicking to keep her balance and helped pull the frightened girl back into a sitting position on the branch.  They hugged each other and cried in relief that White Elk Woman hadn't fallen from the tree and been mauled by the bears.

     Bears stand on their hind legs to make themselves seem even bigger than they already are--they woof and growl, make dreadful snarly faces, chomp their big teeth and try to frighten away any challengers to food and territory. After awhile, the bears could see the two girls in the tree were not a threat and were not going to fall or get down, and so they stopped their show and began to nose around the berry baskets. 

     "Shoo---Shoo!" White Elk Woman and Spotted pony cried to the bear family. "Leave those berries alone!  Gather your own, you lazy things!" 

     But the bears ignored them, of course, and ate up all the berries. Not content with gobbling up all the sweet, ripe fruit, the Momma bear put one of her huge paws on White Elk Woman's basket, bit into it with her teeth and, just like a big dog playing with 
a toy, shook the basket to pieces. Only then did she woof to her cubs and turn back into the woods, waddling away satisfied and full of berries, her two fat little cubs following closely behind her.

     After awhile the two friends climbed to the ground. Spotted Pony's old basket was still in one piece but White Elk Woman's was demolished and tossed around like a summer salad.

     "Oh, that spiteful thing! And just because we said she was lazy, now I have to make a new one," White Elk Woman's pale eyes were about to run over with tears. She had spent hours weaving her basket.  It was constructed of different colored reeds and grasses, was tight enough to hold water, and had once had a beautiful repeating design.

     "I'll help you gather sweet grass to make another," Spotted Pony offered. "That would make a fine, pretty basket wouldn't it?"

     "No, I'd rather use reed or willow---I want a good, strong basket, something to carry bear meat in."

     "Maybe we should look for "bear grass" to make it." Spotted Pony laughed.

On the way back to camp, Spotted pony sat down on a log and asked White Elk Woman to sit down too.

     "I want to give you something, it is strong medicine. I think you need it." She took the double ring from her finger, separated the two, breathed on and handed the silvery white gold ring to her friend.  She put the golden one back on her finger.

     "Always wear this, my friend, and no matter what happens, I will be there for you. Look at the ring and think about me. If you call to me, I will hear and come to help you." She had breathed on the shining white gold circlet to embody it with part of her spirit before she gave it to her friend. And so did Spotted Pony share her most precious worldly possession with White Elk Woman.

     White Elk Woman put the ring on her finger and thanked her dear friend. She thought for a moment and said: "Spotted Pony, you will always be my friend. I, too, promise to help you--no matter what-- If you need me, call to me, I will 
come and help, no matter how many days or miles separate us."



     The years passed and the two friends married, raised families and grew old. White Elk Woman caught the Coughing Disease and died one Winter. Spotted Pony was sad to lose her old friend, and bending down to kiss her forehead, she said goodbye. The 
ring she had given her friend glinted in the sunlight, still on the same finger where she had placed it those many years before as the girls returned from berry picking . The Sioux do not send their loved ones into the spirit world naked and poor, so along with her favorite cooking pot, clad in the white buckskin dress, beads and earrings she had worn as a bride, surrounded by her favorite treasures, and with the shining ring on her hand,
Dear White Elk Woman was laid to rest.

     When Spring unrolled Herself like a multihued carpet a few months later, Spotted Horse was nursing a sick grandchild back to health. The little girl was very frail and weak. Spotted Pony decided to go to the berry patch to pick some sweet, juicy berries for the sick girl, hoping they would strengthen her heart and help her to get well again.

     Once she was in the clearing, memories of her friend, White Elk Woman. flooded back into her heart. She said a prayer and sent thoughts to her old friend.
"Walk in Peace, White Elk Woman. I will always be your friend.."

     Suddenly she felt hot breath on her neck and cheek. A mouth almost in her ear said, "WUFF!" A bear had come out of the forest while she daydreamed! It hugged her close and bit her shoulder. Spotted Pony and the bear seemed to dance around the clearing, but what was really happening is that the old woman was trying desperately to get away from the bear. After a few moments, Spotted Pony began to sink down. She knew 
she was dying, and sent out a thought to her old friend. "I wish you were here to help me!" Then the bear gave a mighty roar, dropped to her to the ground and ran back into 
the forest. Spotted Pony laid there, calling weakly until some young hunters passed that way and found her. They took her back to camp.

     The Medicine Man and the tribe's healing woman treated the old lady and she got better over the course of a few days, although she couldn't seem to wake up.
Finally it seemed like she was being pulled through time and space; multihued layers like gauze rolled back as the light reached into her heart and mind to awaken her. Her spirit had decided to walk the earth for yet awhile.

     When she woke up, she lay looking at her fingers and thinking how amazing it was, how miraculous that she had not died in the woods, wondering why the bear had ran away. While she lay there opening and closing her hands, marveling at their wonderful construction, as people who narrowly escape a violent death often do, something began to nag at her mind. She wasn't sure what it was and yet she felt like there was 
something different, something she should know...... then her eyes went to the finger where she wore the only ring she'd ever owned. There, sparkling in the morning light, clasped as tightly as they had been the first time she had ever seen them, 
were the yellow and white gold rings rejoined on her finger, clasping one another so closely they became as one.

     "Ah, White Elk Woman---Ah, my old friend!---you did come when I needed you. Thank you, thank you for giving my life back to me," Spotted Pony whispered through her tears.

     And the good old woman lived for many more years, bouncing babies on her knees and telling stories through the long, cold days of Winter...... talking sometimes to a friend no one else could see but whose presence no one doubted, either.

by Kathleen Hanna

(Badger Willow Horse)