The prophesized birth of a rare white bison is welcomed among tribes that work to support buffalo.
Just after noon on 4 June, Yellowstone photography guide Jordan Creech was sightseeing with clients when he spotted the freshly-born white buffalo calf, taking its first steps in the park’s Lamar Valley.
Bison calves can walk within two minutes of being born, and run alongside their herd within the first seven minutes of life.
“It’s the most unique experience I’ve ever had,” Creech says.
Erin Braaten, a photographer of Native American descent from Kalispell, Montana, also witnessed the calf’s first moments of life before it disappeared into the herd.
"I thought I'd have a better chance of capturing Bigfoot than a white bison calf," she tells BBC News.
For the last 2,000 years the people of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakoda tribes have told the story of a woman who arrived during a time of need.
A version speaks of two scouts searching for food and buffalo in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
The mysterious woman appeared and offered their tribe a bundle of sacred gifts, including a pipe carved from red rock, and instructed the people on how to live and pray.
She transformed several times before taking the form a white buffalo calf with a black nose, black eyes and black hooves. As she departed, a great number of buffalo returned to feed the people.
Dozens of other tribes have white buffalo stories, interpreting its arrival as both a blessing and a warning.
Chief Arvol Looking Horse, a spiritual leader of the Lakota Tribe, is known as the Keeper of the Sacred Bundle — the bundle and pipe left by the spirit. He likens the white calf’s return to the second coming of Christ.
Looking Horse, 70, said that before she departed, the woman told the people that she would return as a white buffalo calf “when everything is sickly and not good, and when people are with a not good mind”.
“This is spirit. It means spirit is happening,” he added.
On 26 June, more than 500 supporters formally celebrated the white calf at an event in West Yellowstone, just outside the park. Nearly a dozen tribes were represented.
Together, they heard the name bestowed upon the calf - Wakan Gli, meaning Sacred Returns or Comes Holy in the Lakota language. An altar of three buffalo skulls and three buffalo robes marked the occasion.
Waemaetekosew Waupekenay, 38, who travelled from Wisconsin to attend on behalf of the Menominee Tribe, said the birth of the sacred calf has been a spiritual awakening.
Its arrival, he says with amazement, shows that “there's a lot of healing, a lot of love going around. People are being united.”
National Park rangers at Yellowstone have confirmed the white bison's birth, but rangers have not reported any sightings themselves.
“The birth of a white bison calf in the wild is a landmark event in the ecocultural recovery of bison by the National Park Service,” the park said in a statement on 28 June confirming it as the first white bison ever seen inside Yellowstone.
They added that it "may reflect the presence of a natural genetic legacy that was preserved in Yellowstone’s bison, which has revealed itself because of the successful recovery of a wild bison population".
"The National Park Services acknowledges the significance of a white bison calf for American Indians,” it added.
