According to the Lakota legend, a young man named Wakiya was searching for a way to express his love to a beautiful maiden from his tribe. He ventured deep into the woods, where he came across a woodpecker sitting atop a hollow tree branch. As the wind blew through the branch, it produced a beautiful, haunting melody.
Inspired by this sound, Wakiya decided to replicate the music by creating an instrument of his own. He hollowed out a branch from the tree, using holes to mimic the ones made by the woodpecker. After much trial and error, Wakiya crafted a flute capable of producing the same captivating music as the wind and the woodpecker.
Upon returning to his tribe, Wakiya played the flute to express his feelings for the maiden. The music moved her, and they fell in love. The flute soon became an integral part of Lakota culture, with young men using it as a means to court women and share their emotions.
About the flute
Well, you know our flutes, you've heard their sounds and seen how beautifully they are made. That flute of ours, the siyotanka, is for only one kind of music, love music. In the old days the men would sit by themselves, maybe lean hidden, unseen, against a tree in the dark of night. They would make up their own special tunes, their courting songs.
We Indians are shy. Even if he was a warrior who had already counted coup on a enemy, a young man might hardly muster up enough courage enough to talk to a nice-looking winchinchala - a girl he was in love with. Also, there was no place where a young man and a girl could be alone inside the village. The family tipi was always crowded with people. And naturally, you couldn't just walk out of the village hand in hand with your girl, even if hand holding had been one of our customs, which it wasn't. Out there in the tall grass and sagebrush you could be gored by a buffalo, clawed by a grizzly, or tomahawked by a Pawnee, or you could run into the Mila Hanska, the Long Knives, namely the U.S. Cavalry.
The only chance you had to met your winchinchala was to wait for her at daybreak when the women went to the river or brook with their skin bags to get water. When that girl you had your eye on finally came down to the water trail, you popped up from behind some bush and stood so she could see you. And that was about all you could do to show her that you were interested, standing there grinning, looking at your moccasins, scratching your ear, maybe.
The winchinchala didn't do much either, except get red in the face, giggle, maybe throw a wild turnip at you. If she liked you, the only way she would let you know was to take her time filling her water bag and peek at you a few times over her shoulder.
So the flutes did all the talking. At night, lying on her buffalo robe in her parents tipi, the girl would hear that moaning, crying sound of the siyotanka. By the way it was played, she would know that it was her lover who was out there someplace. And if the Elk Medicine was very strong in him and her, maybe she would sneak out to follow that sound and meet him without anybody noticing it.
The flute is always made of cedarwood. In the shape it describes the long neck and head of a bird with a open beak. The sound comes out of the beak, and that's where the legend comes in, the legend of how the Lakota people acquired the flute.