Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2018 10:44:12 GMT -5
This was my motive for joining this group in the first place. This fanciful tale by an imposter brought me here. Frank Hopkins claimed to have been at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, on the day of the massacre. He is portrayed as bringing the message to begin the carnage.
Wow! That is such a lie on so many levels it is not even funny. And then I saw the name "John Shangrau" in the Wikipedia entry and I was fascinated by this man's life story. John Shangrau was the actual person upon whom Frank Hopkins based much of his fraudulent life history. Here was the man who was in charge of the "ghost dance hostiles" with Bill Cody's Wild West! Wow! Now that is a story worth looking into. And I had no idea what rabbit hole I was entering and where it would lead me.
Writing his story took on a life of it's own. That book is mostly "in the can" so to speak. Every once in a while I add details, but then, researching for that book I found George Sword and that became a whole new book, two books actually, that are intertwined. One is the inter-lineal word-for-word translation of the stanzas written by George Sword and the other is the dictionary that goes with it. And I am now in the process of closing in on both. I began work on the word "taku" yesterday and finished up just this morning. If you know this word, you know how special it is to the Lakota world-view.
George Sword used it in three different ways about beings and things. First of all there are the beings and things themselves. And then there are words about collections of them: something, everything. And then there are words about the particulars of beings, whoever, whatever, whenever, wherever, and however. Also there is the meaning of "taku" about being without something or someone and "takuni" and "takunni" are other words used by Sword that have that meaning.
But, for some reason, there is no word for the reason why something is going on. Creation just is. The reason why is the great mystery that only a few know. And they cannot tell us. It can only be experienced. Which is what the solstice dancing is all about.
Wow! That is such a lie on so many levels it is not even funny. And then I saw the name "John Shangrau" in the Wikipedia entry and I was fascinated by this man's life story. John Shangrau was the actual person upon whom Frank Hopkins based much of his fraudulent life history. Here was the man who was in charge of the "ghost dance hostiles" with Bill Cody's Wild West! Wow! Now that is a story worth looking into. And I had no idea what rabbit hole I was entering and where it would lead me.
Writing his story took on a life of it's own. That book is mostly "in the can" so to speak. Every once in a while I add details, but then, researching for that book I found George Sword and that became a whole new book, two books actually, that are intertwined. One is the inter-lineal word-for-word translation of the stanzas written by George Sword and the other is the dictionary that goes with it. And I am now in the process of closing in on both. I began work on the word "taku" yesterday and finished up just this morning. If you know this word, you know how special it is to the Lakota world-view.
George Sword used it in three different ways about beings and things. First of all there are the beings and things themselves. And then there are words about collections of them: something, everything. And then there are words about the particulars of beings, whoever, whatever, whenever, wherever, and however. Also there is the meaning of "taku" about being without something or someone and "takuni" and "takunni" are other words used by Sword that have that meaning.
But, for some reason, there is no word for the reason why something is going on. Creation just is. The reason why is the great mystery that only a few know. And they cannot tell us. It can only be experienced. Which is what the solstice dancing is all about.
