Great Race (Native American legend)
The Great Race is a Native American legend about how order came to the world, told by peoples around the Black Hills. It links to the Sun Dance and the Medicine Lodge ceremony.
Long ago, buffalo and people sometimes fought over who would exist in the world. In many versions, people win control over the buffalo. The story begins with a Suhtai man who has a strange dream for three nights: he shoots at a buffalo, but his arrow goes off course and hits another buffalo. Elders tell him dreams don’t matter, but the dream repeats. He goes hunting, and just like in the dream, his arrow hits a buffalo cow. The cow becomes a beautiful woman, they marry, and they have a son who looks like his mother.
One day the wife and son disappear. The man searches and finds the herd of buffalo, and his son helps him see signals to identify his buffalo kin. The buffalo grandfather and grandmother try to kill him, but the hunter remains calm and strong in spirit. The son warns that the buffalo will challenge his father to a race. The son gives his father a plan: use the black stick, stay on the inside near the rim rock, and duck when the grandfather charges. The man follows the plan and survives.
After tests and warnings from the herd, a council decides to hold a great race between man and buffalo. If the man wins, humans eat buffalo and buffalo won’t eat people; if the buffalo win, people would be eaten. All animals paint themselves in their colors. The buffalo choose Slim Walking Woman as their racer because she is the fastest. A few animals—Swift Hawk, Crow, Magpie, and Eagle—side with the man.
The race begins. Slim Walking Woman leads, but Magpie dives from the sky and passes just before the finish line, giving the man the win. The buffalo concede. The people then build the Medicine Lodge, and on the fourth day the ceremony belongs to humans. The Great Race gives humans power over buffalo, and the Suhtaio come to see themselves as the buffalo people.
The Lakota, Cheyenne, and Suhtai link the Racetrack to the Black Hills and to Sundance and Medicine Lodge ceremonies. Some say the race is ongoing today as animals gather to reenact it. In Cheyenne stories, the race also explains their Sundance or Medicine Lodge, often ending at Buffalo Gap, with some links to the Sun Dance near Bear Lodge Butte.
Different versions also explain meanings about kinship and why certain buffalo parts, like the thymus gland, are treated with special significance, tying the legend to how people view the buffalo and their own relations with nature.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:05 (CET).