Why I chose to create this page The Legend of the Dream Catcher Sitting Bull - Tatanka Iyotanka

I am new at this so bear with me, thought I would give it a try. I want to start a research on my family history and see just how far back I can go. I only know that I have Blackfoot Sioux in my bloodline, of which I am not ashamed. I like to learn new & interesting things about our beliefs and how we lived our lives back then before it was taken from us. Our people were one with the land and nature. I also know that Sitting Bull was the chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux and that Blackfoot Indians were given that name because their moccasins were black from the ash of the fire. The legend of the Dream catcher.....An old Lakota spiritual leader was on a mountain, and while there he had a vision. Iktomi the great teacher of wisdom and a trickster appeared to him in the form of a spider. Iktomi spoke to him in a sacred language, as he spoke the spider picked up the elder's willow hoop which had feathers, horsehair, beads and offerings on it and began to spin a web. He spoke to the elder about the stages of life; how we begin our lives as infants, move on through childhood, and on to adulthood. Finally we go to old age where we must be taken care of as infants, completing the cycle. "But", Iktomi said as he continued to spin his web, " in each time of life there are many forces, some good and some bad. If you listen to the good forces, they will steer you in the right direction. If you listen to the bad forces, they will steer you in the wrong direction, and may hurt you. So you see these forces can either help or interfere with the harmony of nature. While the spider spoke, he continued to weave his web, when he finished speaking he gave the elder the web and said " The web is a perfect circle with a hole in the center, use the web to help your people reach their goals; making good use of their ideas, dreams and visions. If you believe in the great spirit, the web will catch your good ideas and the bad ones will go through the hole." The elder passed on his vison to the people and now many Indian people hang a dream catcher above their bed to sift their dreams and visions. The good is captured in the web of life and carried with the people, but the evil in their dreams drops through the hole in the center of the web and are no longer a part of their lives. Sitting Bull a Hunkpapa Sioux was a medicine man who became a warrior chief, fought against the Americans. He defeated Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876. He was killed on December 5, 1890. A Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man under whom the Lakota tribes united in their struggle for survival on the northern plains, Sitting Bull remained defiant toward American military power and contemptuous of American promises to the end. Born around 1831 on the Grand River in present-day South Dakota, at a place the Lakota called "Many Caches" for the number of food storage pits they had dug there, Sitting Bull was given the name Tatanka-Iyotanka, which describes a buffalo bull sitting intractably on its haunches. It was a name he would live up to throughout his life.