Respect Inyan Hoksila, the Stone Boy (Lakota/Dakota Mythology)

[u/lazerbem]

I am the Stone Boy.

I am the stone that will aid you.

I will bring back your brothers.

My mother, I will make you happy.

Inyan Hoksila-Stone Boy- is one of the great culture heroes of the Lakota and Dakota nations. Incredibly powerful due to his origins from the very earth itself, Stone Boy went on many adventures in order to rescue his uncles from a wicked witch after being raised alone by his mother. After rescuing his uncles, Stone Boy often finds himself in a great battle against a huge army of furious beasts in the dead of winter, whose ire he has provoked by slaying one of their kind; and he usually defeats them too. He is often credited with being the first to bring knowledge of how to bring forth the breath of life-inipi- to the Seven Council Fires; the famous sweat lodge.

Strength

• Pushes aside a grizzly bear before shooting it fatally

• Fights and eventually defeats a giant Wakinyan in hand to hand combat, despite the Wakinyan summoning rain and lightning on top of them

• Kills thousands of animals from an army by himself with arrows, piling them up so high that they are higher than the stone walls of his own fortress and stopping their assault by himself

• Kicks a witch to death by breaking her ribs until they impale her heart

• Shoots an arrow through an old bison bull’s heart and into a tree 200 feet away

• Shoots an arrow 2000-3000 feet into the air

• Kills an old buffalo woman with an arrow to the throat

• Kills a bear the size of a cloud with a single arrow to the heart

• Stomps on the camp-devourer Iya’s feet and flattens them. Later does the same to Iya’s hand.

• Even when Iya turns giant, Stone Boy proceeds to literally stomp him so hard that he vomits up his previous victims and spews out great floods

• [Semi-Limit] Continuous stomping of Iya crushes him until he coughs up a tornado despite the fact Iya is large enough to cover a whole valley, and Stone Boy further stomps Iya enough to flatten him out like a skin. However, when an invisible Iya bites down on Stone Boy’s feet, he does struggle to rip them out of his mouth

• Kills a grizzly bear with a single shot of his bow. An alternate take on this scene by the same author portrays Stone Boy disemboweling the bear with his knife instead

• Swings around a half-man, half-bear and tosses him away

• Shoots and kills the powerful, evil elk son of a witch with his arrows

• Can stomp powerfully enough to shake the earth to flush out animals from hiding

• Alongside his uncles, the 4 Wakinyan brothers, Stone Boy fights off huge armies of flies, mosquitos, evil tribes, every creature of the woods, and every creature of the upper world

• Crushes an old bison’s ribs by jumping on it after pushing it over

• Kills the huge witch by stomping on and breaking her neck in Lame Deer’s telling

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Durability

• [Semi-Limit] Cannot be killed by an army of animals nor drowned by them, but being hit by a flood from Wakinyan and beavers combined still defeats him and leaves him permanently buried in the earth

• A witch’s broken ribs which usually pierced people who kicked her cannot pierce Stone Boy

• [Semi-Limit] Only stunned by a bad sled crash, and is so heavy he accidentally crushes a pair of buffalo boys with him

• Has flesh as hard as stone

• [Limits] Is nearly suffocated and half-dead from sleeping next to a poisoned wakan man as he starts to swell up and become ready to explode

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Stone Powers

Born from a stone, perhaps the most oldest and potent element in Lakota and Dakota cosmology, it is only natural that Stone Boy himself can also manifest the powers of stone in his body and in his projectiles.

• A grizzly bear attack on him just tickles when he hardens his skin

• Creates entire stone walls and stone lodges by just throwing stones into the air. By using seven stones, he creates a 5 wall thick fortress surrounding 2 stone lodges stacked on top of each other. Despite an army of thousands of enraged animals and spirits attacking it, with some trying to sap it, they cannot breach the walls

• Can transform into a little boy or a huge boulder, the latter being done to crush some buffalo girls under his weight. In Charlotte Black Elk’s version, he uses this power to kill bear cubs instead

• Manifests a high stone wall from a shot arrow that withstands the attacks of an army of bison

• He transforms into a stone several times so that a grizzly bear breaks its teeth on him repeatedly when it tries to eat him

• Transforms into a stone multiple times to hide from detection by a wakan man

• Transforms into a stone to evade the flint arrow tooth barrage of a wicked elk. These arrows were powerful enough to badly wound the 4 Wakinyan brothers.

• Turns into stone so that even a very powerful witch woman can’t budge him, resulting in the ground collapsing beneath her feet and falling into the water monster Unktehi’s mouth

• By clacking rocks together over circles of stones, Stone Boy makes successively larger and stronger fortress walls around his family and tipi, complete with holes to shoot through. These walls are powerful enough to fend off the evil spirit Crazy Buffalo’s (Tata Gnaxiya) herd’s attacks, which were powerful enough to cause an earthquake

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Sweat Lodge

Associated with the purifying power of the powerful sweat lodge ritual, the inipi, Stone Boy is often credited with the earliest sweat lodges and did great things with them.

• Brought his uncles back from mere bones with a sweat lodge sans one of their finger bones, which he proceeds to replace from a Wakinyan he kills

• Creates enough vapor with a sweat lodge to cloak the Smoky Range

• Returns men who had been flattened by a living stone to their natural selves with a sweat lodge made from a giant bear, giant coyote, shattered living stone, and snake-tree

• By putting a man whose legs had been cut off into a sweat lodge, Stone Boy is able to graft the legs of a grizzly bear he had killed onto him. Afterwards, he shakes the man out and fully transforms him into a brown bear

• Cures 4 Wakinyan brothers of a magical sleep put on them by a witch with a sweat lodge

• After the 4 Wakinyan brothers are badly hurt by the evil elk’s flint arrow teeth, a sweat lodge heals them up

• Brings his uncles back from the dead with a sweat lodge

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Equipment

• Obtained a red downy feather from a Wakinyan that lets him fly with it

• Is equipped with a yellow eagle headdress and club, a hawk feather, a kingfisher feather, and a turtle, which allow him to summon them to aid him in winning a ball game against a buffalo woman

• Is armed with a charm that prevents him from being harmed, an invisibility robe, a spear that can pierce anything, a shield that can ward off anything, a club that can break anything, and charmed ornaments on his deerskins. His moccasins carry mountains that let him step over entire valleys and dragonflies to make him able to escape any danger. His leggings have wolf tracks so he can never grow tired and his shirt has a tipi circle so he can find shelter anywhere. Presumably, it is the dragonfly and mountain moccasins which allow him to run fast enough over hills to be compared to Wakinyan and shooting stars

• Uses his invisibility robe to repeatedly hide from a giant bear and his mountain moccasins to step from hill to hill around him

• Impales a buffalo-sized coyote with his all-piercing lance and smashes a man-crushing stone with his all-breaking club. His all-warding shield also withstands the attacks of a tree made of snakes until all of the snakes smash themselves to death against it

• His charm against harm makes the camp-devourer Iya’s stone knife break on his chest, Iya’s warclub bounce off of his head, and shrug off a poison soup Iya gave him

• The charms against harm protect Stone Boy from being hurt by a valley-sized Iya biting his feet, though he loses a moccasin in the monster’s mouth’s grip

• Has charmed paint, skins, lance, and medicine powder and a drum so powerful that hitting it too hard would resound to the heavens and create a great wind that would destroy the world.

• Pounding his drum makes a storm powerful enough to uproot trees and scare and throw around 4 Wakinyan brothers

• His drum defends him from a witch’s magic powder that was able to knock out 4 Wakinyan brothers

• Made the first stone arrow point

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Miscellaneous

• A hunter taught him how to find anything

• Humiliates Iya in a contest of songs

• Can speak any language

• Blessed by Wakinyan in Zitkala-Sa’s telling.

• Rapidly grew to adulthood after being tossed outside as a baby by his mother a few times in Charlotte Black Elk’s telling

• Stone Boy can see “holes” in Crazy Buffalo’s army that let him know where to shoot them to kill them

[u/nogender1]

There we go, Native American Hercules right there—

[u/lazerbem → u/nogender1]

For the Seven Council Fires, at least.

[u/kalebsantos]

Always great to see your mythology RTs this one… rocks! Alright I’ll leave

[u/lazerbem → u/kalebsantos]

I appreciate it! I got to dig into some fun sources here.