Long ago in a Lakota village there lived a young woman named Tapun Sa Win—Red Cheek Woman—whose beauty drew suitors from other villages near and far.

As was the custom, each of them took turn and enfolded her in his robe, presenting his case for her affection, all under the watchful eye of elders.

One evening a particularly radiant young man showed up to court Tapun Sa Win. No one had seen him before, nor knew from where he had journeyed. When it was his turn, he stood beside Tapun Sa Win under the cover of his robe and won her heart. She agreed to marry him and the people in the village were happy. At the announcement, though, he told them that he was from the stars and wished to take Tapun Sa Win to his home in the sky.

Reluctantly, the people agreed. So the man from the stars and Tapun Sa Win were married, and then went to live in the sky. They were happy, and she was pregnant. But the star man left their home every day to wander the sky like other stars, and his regular absences and the strange place led her to feelings of loneliness.

Her husband had cautioned her about the sky plants and animals and told her to never dig a particular plant that looked similar to the one she knew from earth.

But one day when he was away, Tapun Sa Win dug that plant, and through the hole where the root was, she could see her Lakota relatives far below.

Seeing them made her loneliness seem unbearable. So she decided she would leave the sky world to visit them. She quickly braided together all of her shawls and blankets and even the roots of plants to create a long rope. She tied one end of the rope to an anchor and dropped the rest through the hole. Then she squeezed through the hole and began shinnying down the rope toward this earth. Unfortunately, she was still far above the earth when she came to the end of the rope. It was too short. She clung to the end of the rope a long time, but eventually she tired and lost her grip, and the fall to the earth killed her.

Upon his return from wandering, her husband peered through the hole and saw Tapun Sa Win lying dead on the earth far below. Heartbroken he sat atop a rock and to this day is still sitting there. He is the one star that does not move. The Lakota people call him Waziya Wicahpi, the North Star.

Soon afterwards, a group of Lakota boys were playing outside their village and found the body of Tapun Sa Win.

Though frightened...they returned and found that miraculously her baby had been born alive and was trying to nurse.

They named him Wicahpi Hinhpaya—Fallen Star—and took him to their village, where the elders decided to raise him.

He grew differently from his Lakota relatives. Within a few earth years, he was a grown man, and he performed many good deeds for the people. One day he told them he was going to return to his father's people in the sky, but he would not forget his Lakota relatives. He said he would help them in two ways. One, he would instruct them in the medicinal uses of plants. The other was that he would help them in times of natural disasters. Then he left and returned to the sky world.

The people were sad, of course, but life went on.

Years, perhaps generations later, the people were returning to the Black Hills from the northwest. One late summer afternoon, they made camp in an area with many pine trees. As the camp was being set up, the children played, as they played, a group of seven girls drifted farther and farther from the camp.

Suddenly the girls stopped playing and—looking all around them—saw that countless bears had silently encircled them....Then, out of the blue above came a voice, "I will save you."

It was Fallen Star. He had not forgotten his promise to help his Lakota relatives...As the ferocious bears closed in, he instructed the little girls to stand atop a mound of earth; then he asked it to raise in the sky. And it did...As the mound rose skyward, the bears clawed all around its sides...But in doing so, the bears dislodged huge spires of granite that fell on top of them, burying all of them...

Fallen Star then asked each girl to choose her favorite species of bird...once she has chosen, a flock of those birds came and carried her to the safety of the camp.

That remarkable monolith still stands as a tangible marker of the relationship between Lakotas and Fallen Star.