The Sky That Grants Motion and Spirit

Skan, the sky, is recorded in the Walker ethnographic system as one of the four Superior gods of Lakota cosmology and is described there in terms considerably more abstract and functionally central than a simple sky deity: Skan is credited as the source of motion itself, of the life force or spirit, nagi, present in living things, and of judgment, determining after death which direction a soul travels along the wanagi tacanku, the Spirit Path identified with the Milky Way, toward its final destination. This combination of functions, granting life-giving motion and spirit while also serving as the presiding judge of the dead, places Skan in a role considerably closer to a supreme, presiding sky authority within the specific Walker-recorded system than the word "sky god" alone might suggest to an outside reader, closer in structural importance to figures such as Tengri in Turkic tradition than to a more ornamental sky deity subordinate to other, more prominent gods. Walker's Lakota collaborators described the various wakan beings as bound by Skan's authority in a formalised council structure, giving Lakota cosmology, at least as this particular source records it, an unusually explicit governing hierarchy among its sacred powers.