Winter Count

Counting By Winters

Winter counts are histories or calenders in which events are recorded in pictures.

The Lakota Sioux call them Waniyetu Wowapi.

Waniyetu is the word for year, which is measured from first snowfall to last snowfall.  It is often translated as "winter".

Wowapi means anything that is marked on a flat surface and can be read or counted, like a book, a letter, or a drawing.

Winter counts are records that were used to tell about an event that happened.  Each year was named for an event and the pictures could be looked up by the people to remember the events.  People knew the name of the year in which events happened and could place them in a time line by referring to the winter count.

The events used to name the year, weren't always the most important thing that happened that year - but they were the events that everyone remembered.

One of these events "The Year The Stars Fell" was known by many tribes.  In fact they were even written down by a person at the Smithsonian who named it the "Leonid meteor storm of November 1833".  He used the events in the Lakota winter count to match the count with the western calandar.

Winter Count Keepers.

Each Lakota band had a person assigned as the Winter Count Keeper.

The keeper was responsible for keeping track of the tribes hstory at events throughout the year and for adding a new picture to the winter count each year.

the council of elders would choose which events the year would be called.

Only men served as winter count keepers, and the role often was passed down from one family member to another.  By the 20th centruy some counts were passed on to women.

Pictures and Materials

For generations, plains Indians drew pictures to document their experiences.  As some Lakota people learned to write their own language in the 19th century, a few keepers began to add words to the pictures, and eventually some winter counts consisted entirely of words.

The earliest winter counts were painted on hides.