“What we hollow bones really become is the pipeline that connects Wakan Tanka and our community together. “The cleaner the bone, the more water you can pour through it, and the faster it will run.”įools Crow, the nephew of the visionary Black Elk, immortalized in John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks, explained he was able to handle the self-sacrifice of being a holy person because he possessed “a clear self image.”Īs a Sioux person, he was taught to understand there was no limit to what the higher powers could do through him. People who have rid themselves of self-serving ego, like medicine and holy people, are the cleanest bones, he explained. If we want luxuries, He has given us at birth the power to work for and obtain these,” he said. “Wakan Tanka is concerned with human needs, and not luxuries.

He accomplished all of this by becoming a “clean, hollow bone” through which Wakan Tanka’s (The Great Mystery’s) powers funneled through him.įools Crow repeatedly told Mails that the more humble and unselfish a person is, the more willing Wakan Tanka and his helpers of the four directions are willing to work through them. In it, the old man explained how he affected cures, consulted with “talking” stones to learn of future events, “lured” to him what he needed in his life, spirit-travelled, and shape-shifted. Mails, a Lutheran minister who wrote about him in several books, including the well-received Fools Crow–Wisdom and Power. 27, 1989, Fools Crow spent time in the late 1970s with Thomas E. Few holy people have been as open about their spiritual practices as Frank Fools Crow, the ceremonial chief of the Teton Sioux who allowed his powers to be written about in books by non-Native authors.Īssuming no ownership of his supernatural abilities-always affirming the “source of power is not ourselves” -Fools Crow explained in detail how he performed “miracles” because he wanted others to believe they could do them as well.īefore he died at the age of 99 on Nov.

Fools crow book