NORTHERN PLAINS INDIAN PRAYER
To the One above, the First Person and the First Maker, we offer this pipe to you. We seek your guidance, over us at all times, for we wish to live well and to be happy always.
Mother Earth, I an offering next this pipe of peace to you. May our lives on you be long ones and happy ones. Do not permit us to travel crooked trails, not let any of our trails go astray, and may our moccasins follow the Trail of Beauty Forever.
I turn to the North, where the eternal winter lives, and yo you who resides there, take also of this pipe. We are weak against your coldness. Be kind to us. Send us only the amount of cold that we can endure. We ask you to send us only the good snows and healthy winds. Snows and winds that quicken our bodies and clean our minds.
Now from the East, from when the Old Man, our Grandfather Sun comes over the far eastern hills and brings us daylight, I offer this pipe to you. May you bring us always good days, bright days, warm days, and we ask of you – let there be nothing to sadden the daylight.
South, where eternal summer lives, I present my pipe to you. When the days grow longer after winter, we beg you to send us a good summer – one in which fruits grow abundantly so that we may live well, and one where grass grows plentifully for the buffalo to feed upon.
To the West, I point my pipe to you. To the peace where our Grandfather, the Sun, wraps his scarlet robe around him and takes the daylight with him, as he goes over the hill. Yours is the place where our ancestors have gone, and we ask of you now to have them watch over us safely. When the time comes for us to follow them, we want to have a joyful reunion with them.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
