The Lakota account is specific. Two men out hunting see a woman approaching. One of them desires her and is reduced to bones; the other is told to return to camp and prepare. She comes to the people, brings the chanunpa, the sacred pipe, and teaches the seven rites: the sweat lodge, the vision quest, the sun dance, the making of relatives, the keeping of the soul, the throwing of the ball and the preparing of a girl for womanhood. Then she leaves, rolling over four times and changing colour at each turn, and departs as a white buffalo calf.
What this account does is make the animal the source of the ritual system rather than an object within it. The pipe is not about buffalo; the pipe comes from the buffalo. A pipe held to be the original is kept by a designated keeper among the Lakota, and the office has passed down a named line.
The birth of a white bison calf is read against this. Several such births since 1994 have drawn large gatherings, and the announcements are made carefully, because a white calf is not the same as an albino one and the distinction is treated as material.
The rites themselves are not open, and this article describes their existence rather than their content. Where a tradition restricts material, the atlas records that it is restricted.