This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Lakota Deities gathers six figures from Lakota religion, four of them named as the Superior gods in James Walker's recorded Oglala theological system, alongside the encompassing sacred power they all serve and one sacred woman who brought the pipe.
Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery or Great Spirit, is the encompassing sacred power underlying and expressed through the whole of creation, described sometimes as a single supreme being and sometimes as a collective term for sixteen distinct sacred beings and forces working in concert. Of the four Superior gods, Wi is the sun god, honoured most directly through the sun dance, the central annual ceremony of Lakota and wider Plains religious life. Skan is the sky god, understood as the source of motion, spirit and life force and as the ultimate judge who determines where a soul travels after death along the Spirit Path, the Milky Way. Maka is the earth goddess, mother of all growing and living things, honoured through offerings and through the Lakota practice of touching or being close to the earth in prayer.
White Buffalo Calf Woman is treated in Lakota religious life as a wakan being sent by Wakan Tanka, who appeared to the Oceti Sakowin in a time of hunger and brought the Chanupa, the sacred pipe, teaching the people how to pray with it before departing in the form of a white buffalo calf. The particulars of the rites she taught remain closed religious knowledge held by recognized pipe carriers and elders, and this entry follows published ethnography in naming her significance without reconstructing that teaching. Iktomi, the spider trickster, stands apart from the others as a clever, mischievous and morally ambiguous figure whose stories teach through his own frequent failures.