Rapaire the book 'Hanto Yo' is a novel, a work of fiction based on a Mahto document discovered in 1865. In the introduction there is a section by Chunksa Yuha , who assisted her translation of the document and describes himself as "a Mdewakantonwan Dakotah, grandson of Wapasa and brought up speaking the archaic language"

He says "Forty years ago I began my serach for a writer, for someone willing and eager to learn my language, to hear the ceremonies not as misinterepreted by missionaries, soldiers and drifting mountain men but as spoken in the old Indian tongue and without need for interpretation.

During my search I was approached by journalists, published authors, professors, and students ... none agreeing to take the time - years if necessary - to enter into an understanding of the Indian as a man of habitual spiritual consciousness."

Then he met Ruth Beebe Hill - a person he describes as " a geologist, a descendant of a Jamestown colony family, a person who had sustained an interest in the American Indian from her childhood. She had read on the western tribes for ten years, and for seven more years had lived, intermittently, on reservations in the midwestern US and Canada, an invited guest of Indian families. Finally she had considered herself mature enough to begin the construction of her story on the Siouan peoples before white influences. When I met her she had completed the second draft of a two thousand page documented novel but was far from satisfied with her work."

Her goal was to translate that 2000 pages of material - which was supported by perhaps 1200 references (nonfiction books and pamphlets on the plains tribes) - into the archaic Dakotah/Lakotah language and back to English again and "so assure herself of no loss of Indian idiom. Or heart. Or truth."

He told her that she needed to approach her story from the viewpoint of Indian philosophy; she needed to check her premise. And so they began a ten-year study of the ancient Siouan language and translation of her original document, sometimes spending weeks or months on a single sentence, "searching out the root, the prime word, the etymon, before contraction".

He says "Soon her book began to acquire substance, a vitality that flowed through each sentence, revealing tremendous concepts. And as I reviewed the written words, I visualized a bridge across a gulf, something to bring together two races of entirely different natures."

I particularly like his concluding sentences - "I am the Dakotah so I know this book stands alone, a book that will survive the generations. For within it's pages flows skan, taku skanskan, something-in-movement, spiritual vitality. I, Chunska Yuha, am but a messenger from my people, all Isanyati Dakotah visible and invisible. But they and I know that the importance is the message, not the messenger...Ruth Beebe Hill wrote the book ... made that bridge out of an enduring substance, something furnished by the consciousness of a race that, in truth, no longer exists, a race of individuals who recognized man as owner of the earth, who regarded nothing more sacred than the right of choice.

"Now, after twenty-five years in construction, that bridge, created out of skan, the life-force, is herewith opened, a two-way bridge that spans a gulf two hundred years wide.

I, Chunksa Yuha, grandson of Wapasa, say so, say so."

The book was required reading for a Religion and Culture course I took at WLU university in the 80's. As was James Clavell's novel "Shogun" required reading for an anthropology course I took the year before. Just because a literary work takes the form of a novel does not mean it loses credibility as a valuable source of cultural (and colorful!) truth.

It is hard to find 'Hanta Yo' these days, except in university/public libraries . Novel or not, it is a unique, educational and inspirational source of truth. IMNSHO. And I highly recommend it to anyone interested in spirituality or the way of life of a long misunderstood people.

daylia