Yellow-Haired Woman

Ehyophstah, the Yellow-Haired Woman, is a central heroine of Cheyenne myth, recorded by George Bird Grinnell in 1926. Given from within the sacred mountain to two young men who had journeyed there in a time of famine, she came to live among the people and brought the buffalo and other game; when a Cheyenne broke the taboo against pitying the slain animals, she departed and the game vanished until ritually restored. In Karl Schlesier's analysis of the Massaum ceremony she is the daughter of Ésceheman, Grandmother Earth, and the thunder spirit Nonoma, and her gift of the animals is the charter of the Cheyenne sacred hunt. Her name was later borne by the historical nineteenth-century Cheyenne woman warrior Ehyophsta.

Parentage

• parent: Our Grandmother
• parent: Thunder

Domains

• buffalo game abundance

Powers

• to call forth the buffalo and wild game for the people

Epithets

• EhyophstahKarl H. Schlesier, The Wolves of Heaven: Cheyenne Shamanism, Ceremonies, and Prehistoric Origins, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987 (secondary)

Sources

• Ehyophstah, the Yellow-Haired Woman, is the Cheyenne heroine and sacred daughter of the earth and thunder powers who first brought the buffalo to the people.: George Bird Grinnell, By Cheyenne Campfires, Yale University Press, 1926 (secondary); Karl H. Schlesier, The Wolves of Heaven: Cheyenne Shamanism, Ceremonies, and Prehistoric Origins, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987 (secondary)