CliffsNotes Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks

Black Elk Speaks By Diane Prenatt, PhD IN THIS BOOK ■ Discover the life and background of John Neihardt ■ Preview an...

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Black Elk Speaks By Diane Prenatt, PhD IN THIS BOOK ■

Discover the life and background of John Neihardt

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Gain a deeper understanding of key themes and ideas in the Critical Essays

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New York, NY • Cleveland, OH • Indianapolis, IN

About the Author Diane Prenatt teaches American literature and interdisciplinary courses at Marian College in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she is associate professor and chair of the English and Communication Department.

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Table of Contents Life and Background of the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Personal History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Career Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Later Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Introduction to the Novel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Brief Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 List of Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Historical Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Critical Commentaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Chapter 1: The Offering of the Pipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Chapter 2: Early Boyhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Chapter 3: The Great Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Chapter 4: The Bison Hunt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Chapter 5: At the Soldiers’ Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Chapter 6: High Horse’s Courting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Chapter 7: Wasichus in the Hills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

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CliffsNotes Black Elk Speaks

Chapter 8: The Fight With Three Stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Chapter 9: The Rubbing Out of Long Hair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Chapter 10: Walking the Black Road . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Chapter 11: The Killing of Crazy Horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Chapter 12: Grandmother’s Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Chapter 13: The Compelling Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Chapter 14: The Horse Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Chapter 15: The Dog Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Chapter 16: Heyoka Ceremony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Chapter 17: The First Cure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Chapter 18: The Powers of the Bison and the Elk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Chapter 19: Across the Big Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

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Chapter 20: The Spirit Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Chapter 21: The Messiah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Chapter 22: Visions of the Other World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Chapter 23: Bad Trouble Coming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Chapter 24: The Butchering at Wounded Knee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Chapter 25: The End of the Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Author’s Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Character Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Black Elk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Black Elk’s Father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 White Cow Sees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Standing Bear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Red Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Crazy Horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Sitting Bull . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Whirlwind Chaser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Critical Essays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Major Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Neihardt’s Authorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 CliffsNotes Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 CliffsNotes Resource Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

How to Use This Book CliffsNotes Black Elk Speaks supplements the original work, giving you background information about the author, an introduction to the novel, an historical timeline, critical commentaries, expanded glossaries, and a comprehensive index. CliffsNotes Review tests your comprehension of the original text and reinforces learning with questions and answers, practice projects, and more. For further information on John Neihardt and Black Elk Speaks, check out the CliffsNotes Resource Center. CliffsNotes provides the following icons to highlight essential elements of particular interest: Reveals the underlying themes in the work.

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Uncovers elements such as setting, atmosphere, mystery, passion, violence, irony, symbolism, tragedy, foreshadowing, and satire.

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LIFE AND BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR Personal History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Career Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Later Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

2


Personal History In 1881, John G. Neihardt was born in Sharpsburg, Illinois, to impoverished parents who passed their interest in reading and the creative life on to him, but found it difficult to make a living in the American Midwest. His father named him John Greenleaf after the popular American poet John Greenleaf Whittier. (Neihardt later changed his middle name to Gneisenau in honor of a German military officer who helped defeat Napoleon.) John showed early signs of being a precocious child, and at the age of eleven during an illness, he had a mystical experience that convinced him of his vocation as a poet. His father, often unemployed, abandoned the family when John was about ten, and his mother moved with her son to Kansas and then Nebraska to live near her parents.

Education Neihardt entered Nebraska Normal School (now Nebraska State Teachers’ College) at the age of twelve, working as the college bell-ringer to pay his way. He excelled to a degree beyond that of his classmates, and enrolled in a special classics program. He graduated in 1897 at the age of sixteen and immediately began writing poetry, determined to live his vocation as a poet. In 1900, he published The Divine Enchantment, a book-length poem about Hindu deities, and in 1904, another long poem, The Wind God’s Wooing, about a Greek fisherman turned into a god. Neither was successful, but both are early indications of Neihardt’s fascination with spirituality and cultures outside the European-American mainstream. Around this time, Neihardt lived with his mother in Nebraska near an Omaha reservation, which probably provided his first acquaintance with American Indians.

Family and Early Career In 1908, Neihardt married Mona Martinsen, a sculptor who had trained with Rodin in Paris. She came to know Neihardt through his published poetry, and they conducted their courtship by mail, marrying the day after they met in person. They were married for 50 years, until Mona died in 1958, and had four children. In these early years, Neihardt published three more volumes of poetry: A Bundle of Myrrh (1907), Man-Song (1909), and The Stranger at the Gate (1912). Some

Life and Background of the Author

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of the poems in these volumes were collected as The Quest and published in 1916. He also wrote numerous short stories, some of which were collected in The Lonesome Trail (1907), two novels—The Dawn-Builder (1911) and Life’s Lure (1914)—and four closet dramas (plays intended to be read rather than performed), two of which were later published as Two Mothers (1921). An account of a 2000-mile canoe trip on the Missouri River, published in serial form in 1909 and 1910, was published as The River and I in 1910. He wrote for Midwestern papers and for the New York Times (literary reviews). His early poetry was received respectfully; the influential editor Harriet Monroe even compared him to the radical American modernist poet, Ezra Pound. In the end, however, the quality of his early poetry was limited: It was highly romantic and even sentimental, the language often ornate and decorative. Some may argue that his location in the Midwest placed him outside the most significant literary community of his day, and that his art suffered from the lack of influence and support. Certainly, as a poet he was a minor figure compared with such young modernists as Robert Frost, for example, whose first collection of poetry was published in 1914.

Career Highlights From 1913 to 1941, Neihardt concentrated his artistic energies on writing A Cycle of the West, an epic poem about the American West composed of five separate songs. During these years, he developed the pattern of doing other kinds of writing to earn money and sometimes to acquire material, then allowing himself an extended period of time to work on his poetry. For example, Outing magazine commissioned The River and I. It was published separately as a first-person adventure or travelogue, but it also supplied a great deal of the background material for The Song of Hugh Glass (1915) and The Song of Three Friends (1919), which were the first two sections of A Cycle of the West. Neihardt’s 1920 biography of Jedediah Smith (an earlier American explorer who was the first to cross the Sierra Nevada), The Splendid Wayfaring, provided material for The Song of Jed Smith, published in 1941. Actually, it was while searching for material for the fifth poem of the series (The Song of the Messiah) that Neihardt first got in touch with Black Elk, visiting the Pine Ridge Reservation with his son Sigurd in August 1930, and returning with his daughter Enid in 1931. Black Elk Speaks was published in 1932 and The Song of the Messiah in 1935.

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From 1912 to 1920, Neihardt worked as literary editor for the Minneapolis Journal. In 1917, the University of Nebraska awarded him an honorary doctorate in literature and, in 1921, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Nebraska. In 1923, he was given a nonteaching chair at the University of Nebraska. During these years he also began to conduct speaking tours, which were enthusiastically received and financially profitable. He published The Song of the Indian Wars in 1925 and his Collected Poems in 1926, for which many people expected him to win the 1927 Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer, however, was not awarded to him. Perhaps disillusioned as a result, he stopped writing for six years. During that time, he worked as literary editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he continued until 1930. He received an honorary doctorate from Creighton University in Omaha in 1929. The recognition that Neihardt received and did not receive during these years speaks to the regional nature of his reputation and the way his subject matter, the settlement of the American West, defined him. When The Song of the Messiah was published in 1935, expectations again ran high for a Pulitzer, which—again—Neihardt did not receive. He returned to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1936 to 1938, and began a long term as associate editor of the Mark Twain Quarterly with its inaugural issue in 1936. A Cycle of the West was finally published in its entirety in 1941. From 1944 to 1946, Neihardt served as Director of Information for the Office of Indian Affairs and continued to work for the organization in a more limited capacity until 1948. From 1949 to 1961, he was the Poet in Residence and Lecturer in English literature at the University of Missouri at Concordia, where he remained a popular instructor. Neihardt’s position at the University of Missouri, which he accepted at the age of 68, was his first secure job; he had made a living until that point by patching together pieces of work-for-hire, temporary editing stints, and the poetry to which he was devoted.

Later Life Rather late in life, Neihardt published a third and final novel, When the Tree Flowered (1951). It is a fictional Indian autobiography that at least one of his biographers considers his best prose work. The novel is based on material from the Pine Ridge Reservation; its title will remind the reader of the symbolic flowering stick or tree depicted in Black Elk’s vision that the Sioux used ceremonially in the sun dance. A little understood aspect of Neihardt’s work in later life is his experimentation with paranormal phenomena, related to his interest in spirituality.

Life and Background of the Author

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John Neihardt died in 1973. Two years before his death, an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show provoked the most viewer response in the history of the show. In 1961, an act of the legislature installed a bust of Neihardt, sculpted by his wife Mona Martinson, in the Nebraska Capitol rotunda, when the governor proclaimed the first Sunday in August John Neihardt Day. His daughter Hilda has published recent (1991) editions of his work.

INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Brief Synopsis

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

List of Characters

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

Historical Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Introduction to the Novel

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Introduction In August 1930, the Midwestern writer John Neihardt went with his son Sigurd to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to speak with Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux. Neihardt was in the process of completing A Cycle of the West, an epic poem concerning the history of the American West. He had published the fourth section, The Song of the Indian Wars, and was looking for material for the final section, The Song of the Messiah. Neihardt had earlier become acquainted with Indian culture when he lived near the Omaha reservation at Bancroft, Nebraska, and he knew Black Elk’s reputation as a holy man and the second cousin to the great Sioux Chief Crazy Horse. When the two men met, Black Elk recognized that Neihardt was a sympathetic listener, someone interested in the spiritual world and in Indian history. He wanted to tell Neihardt his life story, especially the story of his vision, because he felt he would soon die. (Black Elk, 68 years old at the time, would die in 1950 at the age of 87; Neihardt, 43, would live to be 92.) Black Elk had not told many people about this vision; as the story progresses, the reader learns that Black Elk has not told even his best friend, Standing Bear. Black Elk said to Neihardt, “What I know was given to me for men and it is true and it is beautiful. Soon I shall be under the grass and it will be lost. You were sent to save it, and you must come back so that I can teach you.” Neihardt did come back with his daughters in May 1931 to continue the conversation, which forms the book Black Elk Speaks. Black Elk’s son Ben acted as interpreter for the two men, and Neihardt’s daughter Enid recorded their conversation in writing. Black Elk Speaks is an example of personal narrative, which is, most simply, the story of someone’s experiences narrated by that person. Memoir, autobiography, and published diaries—like Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, for example, or The Diary of Anne Frank— are traditional versions of the personal narrative. More precisely, Black Elk Speaks is a narrated autobiography and a spiritual autobiography. Narrated Indian autobiographies had been an established literary form in the United States at least since the 1833 publication of Black Hawk: An Autobiography. These life stories were narrated because most of their Indian subjects did not have the fluency in English to write for the American reading public. But simply to record a life story, even one’s own, does not necessarily create a work of literature; a biography or autobiography, just like a novel or a play, usually has a point of thematic or dramatic interest around which the narrative can shape itself. In the case of Black Elk’s life, that point of interest is the mystical vision he

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was granted. His story is an attempt to explain his successes and failures in enacting the promise of that vision: To what extent he did or did not fulfill the task the vision had delineated for him, the cultural factors that supported his efforts, and the political factors that worked against them. Because the vision was a mystical vision and the task was to be fulfilled in his role as holy man, Black Elk’s story in this respect is a spiritual autobiography: It is based on the premise of a divine power’s existence, as that power is defined in Sioux belief, and it is the story of how Black Elk developed in his relationship to the divine. As the life story of someone whose culture was marginalized and, at times, pushed to near extinction, within the United States, Black Elk’s narrative also has affinities with the American slave narrative and Holocaust survival narratives. In addition, Black Elk Speaks follows the plot line of traditional quest literature, exemplified in many epics and fairy tales. The central character of such literature is a hero whose search to fulfill his or her unique destiny forms the trajectory of the plot. The obstacles and the support that he or she encounters on the way form episodes of the plot. Most quest literature ends happily, with the hero having attained the desired goal, which is often something brought back to share with the community: In The Odyssey, for example, Odysseus brings the rule of law to the Greeks after surviving many dangers to travel home after the Trojan Wars. In this way, the hero of quest literature frequently coalesces the identity of the community and his or her character serves as a model. In the case of Black Elk Speaks, the quest ends tragically. He cannot attain his goal, not because of flaws in his own character, but because of uncontrollable external forces, namely the expansionist drive of white people. Despite the evidence of history, Black Elk does blame himself for his inability to enact the power his vision has granted him to affirm the identity of his people, to make the tree or sacred stick flower, to restore the sacred hoop of his nation. But Black Elk Speaks is not just the story of one man; Black Elk himself says that if it were, it would not be a story worth telling. It is also the history of the Sioux during his lifetime. As a description of tribal life, the novel can be classified as an ethnography, an anthropological examination of the life practices of a particular cultural group. Black Elk’s story is especially valuable from an ethnographic standpoint because it covers the Sioux’s transition from pre-reservation to reservation life. His story includes descriptions of hunting, butchering, cooking practices, ceremonies and rituals related to hunting, healing, and fertility, especially


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the great sun dance; it depicts Indian behavior at war, in courtship, and at play; and it offers a privileged glimpse into the Indians’ spiritual and social life. It records some of the central events of American history from the striking perspective of the Oglala Sioux: the Battle of Little Bighorn, the establishment of Indian agencies and reservations, the ghost dance phenomenon, and the Wounded Knee massacre. Black Elk’s story is also a political story of conquest and dispossession that raises questions about ethics and the use of power and provides an alternative view of the American experience. It challenged the conventional version of American history prevalent at the time of its publication in 1932 that heroized western expansion and glorified the profit-making motive as the doctrine of manifest destiny. Black Elk complicates the cultural relativism of the American historical narrative by observing, for example, that yellow metal (gold) made the white men go crazy; or that the Indians were forced into square houses that lacked the power of the circle; or that treaties were violated in the U.S. Government’s seizure of Indian territory. Black Elk Speaks depicts the great cost, in human and environmental terms, of such events as the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, the settlement of the west, and the discovery of gold. It implicitly questions the military strategy of quelling hostile forces, by contrasting the true genocidal nature of that mission with the general sentiment among the Indians that they simply wanted to live on the land they had always lived on. Finally and importantly, Black Elk Speaks is a sacred text. Black Elk’s account of his visionary experiences is comparable to John’s account in the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible or the Khabbala in the Jewish tradition. Problems with the work stem from the circumstances of its transcription and edition and can never be satisfactorily resolved. Enid Neihardt’s transcription is included in her father’s papers at the University of Missouri, but even a comparison of the transcription with the printed text fails to get at the problem. Readers trying to answer the question of authenticity must acknowledge the many-layered composition of this book: Not only the layer between Enid’s transcription and John Neihardt’s final copy, but the layer interposed by Ben Black Elk’s interpretation of his father’s spoken words, and the layer between Ben’s words and Enid’s writing. And perhaps foremost, readers must acknowledge the layer of time, 60 years of which had passed between Black Elk’s vision and his account of it to Neihardt. By the time he spoke to Neihardt, Black Elk had converted to Roman

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Catholicism, and it is difficult to know how much Catholic iconography influenced his telling of the story. The passage of time also witnessed major cultural displacement among the Indians, which, like any trauma, can alter memory. These can be distracting questions but they are probably not the most important ones. Black Elk Speaks received favorable reviews when it was published in 1932, but soon fell into neglect; an argument can be made that the economic depression of the 1930s distracted potential readers away from a book that seemed fairly esoteric. Interest in the work was revived in the 1950s when the internationally known psychoanalyst Carl Jung made reference to it in a footnote; Jungian psychoanalysts found enlightening its description of community ritual growing out of a personal vision. During the 1960s and 1970s, the book won new readers among the counterculture, with its depiction of communal lifestyles, environmental conservation, and alternative spirituality. Black Elk Speaks was one of several texts of the period—including Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and the films Little Big Man and A Man Called Horse—that spoke to a general revival of interest in American Indian life at a time when the American Indian community was calling for a new sense of identity and was claiming its political prerogatives. The Sioux scholar Vine Deloria says that the book’s greatest effect has been on young Indians trying to establish their own identity, and that it will become “the central core of a North American Indian theological canon which will someday challenge the Eastern and Western traditions as a way of looking at the world.”

Brief Synopsis Black Elk Speaks, a personal narrative, has the characteristics of several genres: autobiography, testimonial, tribal history, and elegy. However, Neihardt’s editing and his daughter’s transcription of Black Elk’s words, as well as Black Elk’s son’s original spoken translation, raise questions about the narrative’s authenticity. Black Elk Speaks is divided into 25 chapters, which depict Black Elk’s early life. As an autobiography, the narrative traces Black Elk’s development as a healer and holy man empowered by a mystical vision granted to him when he was young. As a tribal history, it records the transition of the Sioux nation from prereservation to reservation culture, including their participation in the Battle of Little Bighorn, the ghost dance, and the massacre at Wounded Knee. Black Elk Speaks offers testimony to the price in human suffering


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that the Sioux paid for the westward expansion of the United States. As an elegy, it mourns the passing of an age of innocence and freedom for the American Indian and his current cultural displacement. Neihardt frames Black Elk Speaks with his Preface and Author’s Postscript, which, though modest, remind readers of an editing presence. In these two pieces, Neihardt describes the circumstances of his conversation with Black Elk. Chapters 1 and 2 are preliminary to the description of the great vision in Chapter 3; they convey Black Elk’s confidence in Neihardt and record the first few years of Black Elk’s childhood, including the first time he heard voices at age five. Chapter 3, the longest and most complicated chapter of the book, describes the vision that Black Elk was granted when he was nine years old. Highly iconographic and symbolic, Black Elk’s early vision depicts his journey to a cloud world in the sky where six grandfathers give him sacred objects and empower him to maintain his people’s sacred hoop. From this vision, Black Elk gains a sense of himself as different from others in his band in ways that are both privileged and unsettling. Chapters 4 through 9 chart increasing tension between the Sioux and white Americans, as settlement and commercial enterprise expand westward into Indian territory. The dislocation and loss of culture that the Sioux suffered as a consequence of such events as the discovery of gold in Montana and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad erupts in the Battle of Little Bighorn, recorded in Chapter 9. Black Elk’s narrative continues to recount the increasing dislocation of the Sioux as the U.S. Government annexed more and more Indian territory and established Indian agencies and reservations. At the same time, Black Elk’s vision perplexes him because circumstances do not seem to allow him to fulfill it. In Chapter 11, U.S. soldiers kill the great warrior Crazy Horse, whose loss is a grave one for the Sioux. In Chapter 12, Black Elk finds himself with a small group of his people in virtual exile in Canada, trying to avoid the inevitable reservation life. Chapters 13 through 18 record Black Elk’s increasing anxiety about assuming his role as healer and holy man. These chapters also depict the performance of public rituals (the horse dance and the heyoka ceremony) that allow Black Elk to assume his role publicly. He has another vision, the dog vision, in Chapter 15, and in Chapter 17 performs his first cure. Chapters 19 and 20 record Black Elk’s experience in Chicago, New York, and Europe, performing in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. While in London, he participates in a command performance to

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celebrate Queen Victoria’s jubilee. He becomes close to a young woman in Paris and suddenly falls ill while visiting her. The girl’s family take care of him until he recovers. During his illness, he has another vision. In Chapter 21, Black Elk comes home to an almost totally displaced community, living on reservations, with the bison herd all but extinct. The ghost dance religion revives the Sioux; Chapters 21 and 22 chart Black Elk’s participation in that hope for an apocalypse. Chapters 23 and 24 describe the death of Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee. Chapter 25 describes the aftermath of the massacre and shows Black Elk’s profound disappointment at his failure to enact the power that his vision gave him.

List of Characters Because Black Elk Speaks is an autobiography, not a work of fiction, it does not use characters in the same way that a novel or short story might. The characters in this narrative are actual people, some of them well-known historical figures, whom Black Elk knew and interacted with. (The question mark following some of the dates below indicates an uncertainty about a date due to the lack of written records.)

Black Elk (1863-1950) Oglala Sioux holy man and healer; also the name of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

White Cow Sees Black Elk’s mother. Refuse-to-Go Black Elk’s maternal grandfather. Plenty Eagle Feathers Black Elk’s maternal grandmother. Standing Bear Minneconjou Sioux; Black Elk’s friend from childhood, who participated in the Battle of Little Bighorn, who is present at Black Elk’s meeting with Neihardt and occasionally supplies more information in his story.

Whirlwind Chaser Standing Bear’s uncle, the medicine man who is paid to cure Black Elk of the illness he suffered at the time of his great vision, and who recognizes that Black Elk has had a genuinely sacred experience.


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Crazy Horse (1842?-77) Oglala Sioux chief whom Black Elk thinks was the greatest of all; holy man and warrior; fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn; Black Elk’s second cousin; imprisoned and killed by U.S. cavalry officers.

Red Cloud (1822-1909) Oglala Sioux chief; Sioux peacemaker and representative in numerous treaty negotiations with U.S. Government.

Long Hair General George Armstrong Custer (1839-76); commander of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, defeated in the Battle of Little Bighorn; led the Black Hills Gold Discovery Expedition of 1874; a veteran of the Civil War.

Sitting Bull (1834?-90) Hunkpapa Sioux chief and holy man; fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn; he was killed by U.S. cavalry officers while resisting arrest shortly before the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Buffalo Bill William Frederick Cody (1846-1917); U.S. plainsman, frontier scout, and showman whose Wild West Show takes Black Elk to Europe from 1886-89.

Grandmother England Queen Victoria (1819-1901); queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1837-1901) and Empress of India (1876-1901).

Bear Sings The medicine man who helps Black Elk perform the horse ceremony, a public enactment of his great vision.

Few Tails The medicine man who helps Black Elk perform the lamentation ceremony in which he receives his dog vision.

Wachpanne the heyoka, sacred fool, who helps Black Elk perform the heyoka ceremony, a public enactment of the dog vision he received in his lamentation ritual.

Three Stars U.S. Cavalry General Crook, who was beaten by Crazy Horse at the Battle of the Rosebud, eight days before the Battle of Little Bighorn; also negotiated the treaty of 1889 which took away much of the Sioux Black Hills territory.

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Hairy Chin Sioux medicine man who directs Black Elk’s first participation in a healing ceremony for Rattling Hawk.

Rattling Hawk the young Sioux warrior who is injured in the Battle of the Rosebud, whose healing by Hairy Chin is assisted by Black Elk.

Fire Thunder Childhood friend of Black Elk who is present when he talks with Neihardt and confirms some details of his story.

Watanye An older Sioux man who teaches Black Elk how to fish and tells him the story of High Horse’s courting.

High Horse The main character of the tale “High Horse’s Courting,” who goes to dramatic and comic lengths to win his beloved.

Red Deer High Horse’s friend, who schemes with him in his courtship.

Crow Nose The Sioux horse guard who kills a Crow Indian trying to steal the Sioux horses.

Gall A Hunkpapa Sioux chief who fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn and later temporarily joined Sitting Bull in Canada.

Iron Hawk A Hunkpapa Sioux childhood friend of Black Elk who participated in the Battle of the Rosebud and the Battle of Little Bighorn, and who is present at Black Elk’s meeting with Neihardt and adds to Black Elk’s story.

Dull Knife His band of Shyelas (Cheyenne) was ambushed by Col. Mackenzie in November, 1876.

Brave Wolf A Sioux hunter who sacrifices his life defending a beautiful girl and her parents from a Crow attack, while Black Elk’s people are in Canada.

Hard-to-Hit Black Elk’s cousin, who dies while the Sioux are in Canada, whose wife Black Elk’s takes under his protection.


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Black Road Sioux who assists with Black Elk’s horse dance. One Side Sioux who assists with Black Elk’s heyoka ceremony and bison ceremony.

Cuts-to-Pieces Sioux whose son is cured by Black Elk is his first healing ceremony.

Fox Belly Medicine man who helps Black Elk to perform the bison ceremony, the public enactment of a part of his great vision.

Running Elk Standing Bear’s uncle, a wise man who helps Black Elk to perform the elk ceremony, the public enactment of a part of his great vision.

girl-friend Black Elk’s unnamed girlfriend, a young Parisian woman in whose house he was staying when he received his “spirit journey” vision just before he left to tour with the Wild West Show to come home.

Wovoka The Paiute seer whose visions and prophecies inspired the ghost dance; called Jack Wilson by the whites.

Good Thunder One of the ghost dancers whom Black Elk dances with.

Kicking Bear Holds the first ghost dance. Big Foot He and his people, some formerly from Sitting Bull’s band, were massacred at Wounded Knee.

Yellow Bird Sioux warrior whose struggle with a gun killed a cavalry officer and set off the massacre at Wounded Knee, at which he also died.

Old Hollow Horn Medicine man who heals Black Elk’s gunshot wound, received in the aftermath of the massacre at Wounded Knee.

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Historical Timeline c. 1600 5,000,000

c. 1600 negligible

SIOUX NATION

UNITED STATES

81 soldiers killed

Red Cloud negotiated; seemed to secure Lakota territorial claims

Treaty of 1868

Closed Bozeman Trail; limited access to Montana gold fields

Divided bison herd; dislocated Plains tribes

Transcontinental Railroad 1869

Facilitated western settlement and commerce

Increased white presence; treaty violations

Black Hills Gold Discovery Expedition 1874

Led by Custer; profitmaking potential

Short-lived Indian victory; murder of Crazy Horse probably in retribution

Battle of Little Bighorn 6/25/1879

Death of Custer and defeat of Seventh Cavalry

Hunger, starvation, loss of contact with sacred animal

Near extinction of bison herd

Facilitated building of ranches, expansion of railroad system

Dislocation of Indians; loss of tradition and lifestyle

Establishment of Indian agencies and reservations

Containment of threat to expansion and commerce

Cultural revival

Ghost Dance

Threat of uprising

Deaths of 153 men, women, and children; Sitting Bull killed

Massacre at Wounded Knee 12/29/1890

U.S. Census Bureau announces closing of American frontier

Indian population in what is now the U.S. decreases

Fetterman Fight 12/12/1866

c. 1900 210,000

White and other non-Indian population in what is now the U.S. increases

Black Elk’s father broke his leg

c. 1900 76,300,000

CRITICAL COMMENTARIES Chapter 1: The Offering of the Pipe . . . . .18 Chapter 2: Early Boyhood . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Chapter 3: The Great Vision . . . . . . . . . . .26 Chapter 4: The Bison Hunt . . . . . . . . . . . .32 Chapter 5: At the Soldiers’ Town . . . . . . .35 Chapter 6: High Horse’s Courting . . . . . .37 Chapter 7: Wasichus in the Hills . . . . . . .39 Chapter 8: The Fight With Three Stars . . .43 Chapter 9: The Rubbing Out of Long Hair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Chapter 10: Walking the Black Road . . .49 Chapter 11: The Killing of Crazy Horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Chapter 12: Grandmother’s Land . . . . . .52 Chapter 13: The Compelling Fear . . . . . .54 Chapter 14: The Horse Dance . . . . . . . . .56 Chapter 15: The Dog Vision . . . . . . . . . . .57 Chapter 16: Heyoka Ceremony . . . . . . . .59 Chapter 17: The First Cure . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Chapter 18: The Powers of the Bison and the Elk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Chapter 19: Across the Big Water . . . . . .63 Chapter 20: The Spirit Journey . . . . . . . .65 Chapter 21: The Messiah . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Chapter 22: Visions of the Other World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Chapter 23: Bad Trouble Coming . . . . . . .69 Chapter 24: The Butchering at Wounded Knee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70 Chapter 25: The End of the Dream . . . . . .71 Author’s Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73

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Chapter 1

The Offering of the Pipe

Summary Black Elk makes it known that he intends to tell John Neihardt the story of his life, especially his early vision, which Black Elk says he failed to fulfill. In ritual fashion, Black Elk and Neihardt smoke the red willow bark in Black Elk’s holy pipe as an offering to the Great Spirit. Black Elk tells a story about a sacred woman who appeared to two men and offered them a pipe, and then offers an invocation before proceeding with the story of his life and vision.

Commentary In this initial chapter, Black Elk endorses John Neihardt as the person through whom he will tell his story, which is part autobiography, part spiritual revelation, and part tribal history. He emphasizes that his own life story is also the story of his tribe and that, in fact, it would not be worth telling if it were only his personal story. This statement indicates the communal nature of Indian experience; Black Elk thinks of himself almost entirely in the context of his tribe or band, and he embodies the values of his people. In that respect, he is like the heroes of classical literature, Odysseus and Beowulf. This chapter also establishes the style of the narrative. Black Elk tells his story in the first person; he is the narrator and refers to himself as “I.” The language is simple, partly because the story is told through an interpreter (Black Elk’s son Ben). The tone of the narrative is elegiac, a lament for a time that has gone and for what Black Elk sees as his personal failure in not enacting the vision he was granted (see Chapter 3 for more on the vision). Black Elk Speaks is the transcription of personal conversations between Black Elk and Neihardt. This format was not new; narrated Indian autobiographies were popular at least as early as 1833 when Black Hawk: An Autobiography was published. Consistent with the practice of many different American Indian tribes, which had a long

Critical Commentaries: Chapter 1

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tradition of storytelling, Black Elk intersperses his narrative with anecdotes, folk stories, and sometimes chant and prayer. For some tribes, written language was not important. Sioux history, for example, including the years of Black Elk’s life, was memorized and passed down orally from father to son for several generations. From time to time, Neihardt uses a footnote to clarify something that Black Elk says, but unlike Black Elk, Neihardt is not a character in this story. He seems to be completely absent from Black Elk’s story, but scholars have begun to study Neihardt’s manuscript in order to understand how much editing and revising of Black Elk’s words Neihardt actually did. Such analysis is beyond the scope of this book, but readers should understand that Neihardt may not be as unobtrusive in Black Elk’s narrative as he seems. This chapter also begins to establish Black Elk’s character. Appearing modest, even self-critical, Black Elk says that he was too weak to actualize his vision and perhaps save his people. Seeing himself as an instrument of a higher power, Black Elk emphasizes that the power of the vision manifested itself through him. He does not claim to be a special person with extraordinary powers. He experiences self-doubt and reflects on his life in a way that is characteristic of mature people. This chapter introduces some of the themes and symbols of Sioux culture that recur throughout Black Elk’s narrative. The four ribbons tied to the pipe that he and Neihardt smoke represent the powers of the four quarters of the universe: black for the west, the source of rain; white for the north, the source of cleansing wind; red for the east, the place of the morning star that gives wisdom; and yellow for the south, the place of summer and growth. These four directions and the colors and qualities associated with them recur throughout the narrative, especially in the story of Black Elk’s vision (see Chapter 3). All four powers unite in one Great Spirit, which is represented by the eagle feather, also a recurrent symbol in the story. Black Elk’s explanation offers the reader some understanding of the Sioux notion of divine power or Great Spirit, its manifestations in the natural world, and the symbolism associated with it. The story Black Elk tells about the sacred woman who brought the pipe to the Sioux emphasizes the symbology he elaborates on in his vision, such as the four quarters of the universe and the sacredness of the bison and the eagle who represent the earth and the sky. Every ritual or sacred object is attached to a story. Inviting Neihardt to smoke his pipe with him as an indication of friendship and trust, Black Elk

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concludes the chapter with a prayer to the Great Spirit, whom he also calls Grandfather. The Great Spirit of Black Elk’s belief appears to be the equivalent of the Judeo-Christian God, the divine power that oversees everything on earth, characterized here as kind and loving.

Glossary (Here and in the following sections, difficult words and phrases are explained.)

two-legged/four-legged a poetic way of describing bipeds (humans) and quadrupeds (animals). Great Spirit In Sioux belief, the divine power that created the world, whose presence can be perceived in daily life; comparable to the Judeo-Christian idea of God. Hetchetu aloh

it is so indeed.


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Chapter 2

Early Boyhood

Summary Black Elk begins telling Neihardt his life story, ending this chapter with an account of his first vision at the age of five. He relates the events of his early childhood in the context of increasing tension between American Indians and the whites who wanted to settle the West. He introduces two older friends who interrupt his story to supply some of the details that he does not know or has forgotten. Black Elk is an Ogalala Lakota, born in the Moon of the Popping Trees during the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed (December 1863). Three years later, his father was wounded in the Battle of the Hundred Slain (the Fetterman Fight). During the first three years of Black Elk’s life, his tribe was increasingly embattled with the white man, who was motivated by greed for gold and land. He compares that to the ancient past of the Indians, when animals and human beings lived together in harmony. Black Elk introduces and invites his older friend, Fire Thunder, who fought in the Battle of the Hundred Slain, to describe that battle. Fire Thunder explains that, fearful of encroaching white settlement, Chief Red Cloud organized a victorious Indian attack on white soldiers in December 1866. He describes a scene of great destruction in which even a surviving dog was shot to death with arrows. Black Elk resumes his description of his family’s journey west, away from the white man and their encampment. Hunting was poor, and people suffered from snowblindness during this cruel winter. When summer came, they moved again, and Black Elk recalls watching his five- and six-year-old friends play war games on horseback. Fire Thunder describes a second battle that took place in August 1867: The Indians suffered heavy losses in the Wagon Box Fight at the hands of white men using breech-loading Springfield Rifles. Black Elk’s friend Standing Bear confirms the location of their camp that winter. Black Elk began to hear voices the following summer, when he was four years old, and the voices frightened him. When he was five, at the time his grandfather gave him his first bow and arrows, Black Elk had a vision in which two men appeared in the sky singing a sacred song. Although he liked thinking about the vision, Black Elk was afraid to tell anyone about it.

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Commentary This chapter introduces three central themes in Black Elk’s narrative: the great cultural and philosophical differences between Indians and whites that resulted in conflict and destruction as whites moved west; the visionary ideal of the perfect Indian society, which existed in the mythic past but was spoiled in the present by the actions of the whites; and, finally, the problems of autobiographical narrative, including the accuracy of memory, complicated in Black Elk’s case by the translation, transcription, and editing of his oral narrative by others. At the time of Black Elk’s birth, the U.S. Civil War had slowed down westward expansion, both because the war consumed national efforts and because many able-bodied young and middle-aged men that would have immigrated had become war casualties. The decade between 1860 and 1870 was the first decade since the 1790s that did not witness a 30 percent growth in United States population. The Gold Rush of 1849 had diminished. Kansas became a state in 1861, and the next to enter the union would be Nebraska in 1867. Only about a third of Minnesota and Texas was inhabited by whites; the rest of what are now American States were territories. In 1869, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads would join in Utah to form the Transcontinental Railroad. Some of the most immediately apparent differences between Indian and white culture in this chapter seem merely superficial, but actually represent deep contrasts in worldview. One of these differences relates to the concept of space. At this time, the U.S. Government was annexing huge amounts of land, naming them “territories,” which the Indians had formerly inhabited. In addition to claiming “uninhabited” territory, the government imposed geopolitical boundaries that defined states and the nation, but nineteenth-century Indians refused to acknowledge these claims and boundaries. Indians maintained a sense of tribal boundary, marked by encampment and use of the land, but they did not share the Euro-American concept of land ownership. The U.S. Government struck treaties with the Indians, and then violated those treaties. And, to make room for the Transcontinental Railroad, the whites annihilated the bison that were food and a sacred animal to the Indians. Many American Indian tribes, such as Black Elk’s, moved camp seasonally to take advantage of hunting, harvesting, or foraging opportunities. Black Elk most often refers to geographic locations according to features in the landscape, especially rivers, which were important as a source of water and food. Black Elk’s statement that he was born on the


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Powder River, rather than in Wyoming or South Dakota, is an expression of Indian culture that contrasts with the U.S. Government’s practice of marking out boundaries to control the ownership of land. Another difference between the Indian and white worldviews relates to the calculation of time. Black Elk locates events in traditional Indian time, and Neihardt uses footnotes to translate these into familiar terms. Instead of months, Black Elk speaks of “moons,” which are described according to seasonal features: the Moon of the Popping Trees translates into December, the Moon of the Changing Season is October, the Moon When the Ponies Shed is May, and so on. Years are not enumerated in relation to the birth of Christ (B.C., A.D.), who is not the center of Indian spirituality, but are named according to distinct events: the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed, for example. This practice is also consistent with the oral culture of Black Elk’s tribe, for whom written numerals were not especially meaningful. Related to Black Elk’s concept of time is his belief in an ancient, idyllic past, before the coming of the white man, when the Indians lived in their own land and were not hungry because humans and animals lived together in kinship and there was plenty for all to eat. Black Elk’s belief is similar to the myth of a Golden Age. Many cultures share the belief in a mythical golden age—when all creatures in the world lived in harmony, and pain and suffering were unknown; the Biblical account of the Garden of Eden before the fall of Adam and Eve is such a story. Frequently, the mythology of a culture is an attempt to explain its fall from that ancient innocence into the evil of the present. It is significant that the white man’s greed for gold and ownership of the land occasions the fall from harmony into disorder. Black Elk calls the white man Wasichu, which Neihardt’s footnote explains is not a reference to skin color. The white man’s obsession with gold is the root of the terrible dislocation of Indian culture and the destruction of the land. In order to mine the gold, the white men wanted to build a road through Indian country and, although they claimed they needed only a strip of land as wide as a wagon, it is clear that they wanted as much as they could get. The Indians feared that this road—and the path of the Union Pacific Railway—would frighten away the bison, which finally did happen. A direct connection is made between the white man’s greed and the lamentable alienation of animals and humans into separate little islands, which became smaller and smaller in comparison to the flood of the white men.

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In this chapter, Black Elk’s elders threaten the children with the white man, so that they grew up in fear of whites; the young children act out their war games against imaginary Wasichus. As an adult, Black Elk has a more comprehensive understanding of his resentment and grief over the damage that the white man’s intervention did to Indian culture. Another important aspect of this chapter is the introduction of the holy man and the medicine man, essential characters, who represent some of the most distinctive beliefs of Indian culture, and who foreshadow Black Elk’s development as a healer and holy man. Black Elk relates the words of the holy man Drinks Water, who told his grandfather that with the coming of “a strange race” (the white man) the Lakotas would live in square houses in a barren land and would starve. This has, indeed, come to pass, and Black Elk says that dreams can be very wise. Similarly, in the difficult winter after the Battle of the Hundred Slain, a medicine man named Creeping cures people who are snowblind by singing a sacred song that he had heard in a dream. This belief in the power and the prophetic wisdom of dreams prepares the reader for and adds credibility to Black Elk’s voices and visions. This chapter ends with the circumstances of Black Elk’s first vision. At five years of age, he was hunting birds on horseback, when one of the birds spoke to him. When Black Elk looked up, he saw two flying men, singing a sacred song to the accompaniment of the drumming of thunder. The men then turn into geese and disappear, and it rains. This vision conveys two ideas. One is the Indian belief in the solidarity of all living creatures and the possibility of slipping back and forth between human and animal forms: the bird speaks; the men turn into geese. It is important that Black Elk receives his vision in the natural world of woods and clouds, that creatures of nature deliver the message, and that thunder and rain accompany the vision. The Sioux depended on nature for their most essential physical needs and also saw in nature the evidence of divine power. The vision also conveys the idea that calling or destiny can mark an individual. Like other heroes, Black Elk is ambivalent about accepting the message he has been singled out to receive: “I liked to think about it, but I was afraid to tell it.” His modesty is an important part of his character as it develops throughout the narrative. Finally, this chapter exemplifies some of the critical problems that the narrative presents as a whole. Black Elk refers several times to forgetting details or having been too young to observe them. Fire Thunder and Standing Bear are helpful in lending credibility to his narrative; their


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corroboration also indicates the communal nature of Indian experience. Black Elk is also shaping his narrative to some extent to reflect his own interpretation of his life and Lakota history. This is a standard practice that a critical reading of any autobiography must acknowledge. Black Elk’s personal authority develops with his narrative, and the reader’s trust and sympathy develop as well. In addition to the filter of Black Elk’s memory and imagination, his narrative also passes through the filter of his son’s translation and Neihardt’s transcription and editing. Neihardt’s footnotes that clarify some of Black Elk’s references are helpful, but it is difficult—and can be problematic—to try to separate the content of Black Elk’s narrative from Neihardt’s language.

Glossary Lakota one of three groups (the other two being Dakota and Nakota) that made up the Sioux tribe or nation; the Lakota and Dakota, both located west of the Missouri River, are together sometimes referred to as West Tetons. Ogalala (variant spelling of Oglala) one of the six bands that made up the Lakota group of the Sioux tribe or nation; the other five are Hunkpapas, Miniconjous, Brules, Sans Arcs, and Black Kettles. Wounded Knee The name given to the Sioux encampment around Wounded Knee Creek in Montana. Wasichu

The Lakota name for members of the Caucasian race.

warpath route taken by a party of American Indians going on a warlike expedition or to a war. Shyela

The name Black Elk uses for the Cheyenne Indians.

Blue Clouds

The name Black Elk uses for the Arapahoe Indians.

hoka hey A Lakota phrase meaning “charge”. tepee a cone-shaped tent of animal skins or bark used by North American Indian peoples. pony drag a conveyance made from wooden poles covered with hide, hitched to a pony or horse, for the purpose of carrying people or equipment. snowblindness the condition of being temporarily blind from the sun’s ultraviolet rays reflected by the snow.

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Chapter 3

The Great Vision

Summary In this unusually long chapter, Black Elk has a vision at the age of nine. There is nothing to report from his life between the ages of five and nine. During this time, the white men had moved away from Indian encampments to live along the newly built Union Pacific Railroad. The building of that railroad and its subsequent expansion into the Transcontinental Railroad (1869) had divided the huge grazing ground of the bison into a north and south half. Half of the herd was more than Black Elk’s people could use anyway. Black Elk is eating when he hears a voice telling him to hurry because his Grandfathers are waiting. He grows sick and cannot walk. His legs, arms, and face swell up. The Indians are moving camp, but he is so ill he has to be carried. When he is laid down to rest in his parents’ tepee, he sees through the opening in the top the same men he had seen in the sky four years before. They call to him that his Grandfathers are waiting for him. A cloud takes him, following the men, to a place made of cloud in which he beholds an extraordinary, highly symbolic vision. Black Elk describes it in precise detail. In cloud world, a bay horse greets Black Elk and tells him that he will tell Black Elk the life history of himself and others. The bay horse makes a circular turn in the four directions, north, south, east, and west. Twelve horses are in each direction, each group of 12 matching in color: the horses to the north are white, those to the south are buckskin, to the east, sorrel, and to the west, black. The bay tells him that the horses will take him to his Grandfathers. The sky then fills with dancing horses who change into diverse animals and flee as the bay and Black Elk walk on, leading a formation of the horses from the four directions. They come to a cloud that changes into a tepee with a rainbow for a door. Inside the tepee the six Grandfathers are waiting. The first Grandfather tells Black Elk that his Grandfathers all over the world are having a council and that they will teach him. Black Elk then realizes that these are the Powers of the World. Each of the six Grandfathers in turn tells Black Elk something about himself and his


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people’s future and gives him a symbolic object. The first Grandfather gives Black Elk a wooden cup of water that contains the sky, which is the power to live, and a bow, which is the power to destroy. He tells Black Elk that his spirit is Eagle Wing Stretches and then turns into a starving black horse. The second Grandfather gives him an herb that fattens the black horse, which becomes the first Grandfather again. The second Grandfather tells Black Elk that he will make a nation live and that he will have the power of the white giant’s wing; he turns into a white goose. The third Grandfather gives him a peace pipe with a spotted eagle on it and tells him that he will make well whatever is sick. He points to a red man who turns into a bison and joins the sorrel horses that also turn into bison. The fourth Grandfather gives him a red stick, sprouted and with birds in its branches, saying that it is the living center of a nation and that Black Elk will save many. Black Elk thinks he sees in the shade of the stick a village of people lying like a hoop, the stick in the middle blooming like a tree at the intersection of a red road and a black road. The fourth Grandfather tells Black Elk that the north-south road (the red one) is good and the east-west road (black) is trouble and war. He says that Black Elk will walk with power on both and will destroy a people’s foes. He then turns into an elk. The fifth Grandfather turns into a spotted eagle and tells Black Elk that he will have a special relationship with birds. The sixth Grandfather changes before his eyes, regressing in age until he is a boy who is Black Elk himself. He tells Black Elk that he will have his, the Grandfather’s, power and that his nation will know great trouble. He gives him the name Eagle Wing Stretches. After the Grandfathers finish speaking to him, a voice summarizes all he has been given. In his vision, he rides the bay horse until he comes across a blue man in a flaming river. White troops, red troops, and yellow troops try to charge the blue man, and are beaten. Black Elk succeeds in killing him, and knows that he has taken the form of rain and killed drought. Black Elk sees a circled village and is told it is his. Everyone in the village seems to be dead or dying, but as he rides through, they revive. A voice tells him that it is the center of the nation’s hoop that he has been given that made the people live. The voice tells him to give them the flowering stick, the sacred pipe, and the wing of the white giant. When he plants the stick in the center of the hoop, it grows immediately into a tree, under which all living things live happily. The sacred pipe flies in on eagle’s wings, bringing peace. The daybreak star rises and the voice says that it will bring wisdom to all who see it. The entire group, including the spirits of the dead from the past, walk with Black

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Elk and the bay down the red road; the voice says they are walking in a sacred manner in a good land. They must climb four ascents, each one getting progressively steeper and more difficult. After the first, the people change into animals, and at the second, the animals are restless and the leaves are falling from the tree. The voice says that from here on, Black Elk must remember what he was given because his people will be in difficulties. They begin to walk the black road, and the nation’s hoop is broken. The fourth ascent is horrifying, the people and their horses starving, and the voice that has been guiding them seems to weep. At this point, Black Elk sees a man painted red who changes into a bison near which a sacred four-rayed herb springs up. The herb blossoms in four colors that represent the four directions and is growing where the tree had been, in the center of the hoop. Black Elk sees fighting, gunfire, and smoke, and his people fleeing like swallows. His own horse is reduced to skin and bones, but he cures him with the herb. Four virgins enter, carrying some of the symbolic objects Black Elk has been given by the Grandfathers. They dance and the horses dance. He looks down upon his people and the earth is restored and they are happy once again. Still on his horse, he sees the whole world as one, the hoops of many nations united in one hoop, with one mighty tree sheltering everyone as the children of one father and one mother. He saw that it was holy. Two men fly in and give him the sacred herb to plant. The voice tells him he will go back to his six Grandfathers and he follows the two flying men who change into flocks of geese. Black Elk rides through the Grandfathers’ tepee, made of cloud, rainbow, and lightning, and they welcome him in triumph. The Grandfathers tell him he will go back empowered and restore his people. They give him the sacred gifts they gave him before. He sees himself among his people, lying as if he were dead, which his Grandfathers call a sacred manner. As Black Elk leaves the Grandfathers, he is lonely and looks back to see the spotted eagle. The rainbow tepee disappears and he sees his own village and hurries toward it. He enters his tepee and sees his parents attending a sick boy who is himself. He then regains consciousness and is sad because his parents do not understand where he has been.

Commentary This is by far the longest chapter in the book and it presents the central event of Black Elk’s life, his vision. It was common among many Indian tribes, including the Sioux, to induce a vision by means of fasting and sweating, at the time of initiation into adulthood. What Black Elk


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experiences here is different. The vision came to him, rather than being induced, indicating that he is singled out to receive something extraordinary. It is important that other special individuals in the band, holy men and medicine men, recognize the unique experience of Black Elk and support him in claiming the tribal role that the vision directs him to. Black Elk’s vision is partly apocalyptic, that is, it deals with the end of history or the human race in the imaginable future. Apocalyptic visions are not unusual during a time of crisis in a culture; historically, concerns that the world as it is known is about to end have even been precipitated by the turn of a century or of a millennium, such as the Y2K scare in the late 1990s. The Judeo-Christian tradition also features an apocalyptic phenomenon, especially the concept of the final judgment or judgment day as it is represented in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Black Elk’s vision presents a condensed history of mankind, from its innocent and blissful beginnings, similar to a garden of Eden, through the difficult present and horrific near-future, into a final return to prosperity and happiness similar to its beginning state. The vision comprises a coherent system of images (an iconography) that have commonly understood meaning among the Sioux. The numbers four and twelve have major significance, for example. The number 12 is used in the number of virgins, horses, and bison. There are four directions (north, south, east, and west), four seasons, four ages of a person’s life, and four ages (ascents) of tribal history. Different colors and qualities, as well as sacred objects are associated with the four directions that mark out the four quarters of the world, as follows: NORTH white winter white horses white giant’s wing herb death

SOUTH yellow summer buckskin horses sacred hoop

EAST red spring sorrel horses daybreak star

WEST black fall black horses cup of sky

flowering stick maturity

pipe youth

bow old age

It is apparent that the circle shape is sacred as well. Like many American Indian tribes, the Sioux did not use the wheel for practical purposes until they began to adopt the technology of the whites. For example, the “pony drag” that Black Elk frequently refers to, a kind of horse-drawn sled used to move people and equipment, was used

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instead of a wagon or cart with wheels. For Black Elk, the number four denotes a circle, not a square, as the four directions denote the earth. The sacred hoop of his nation that he refers to is the integrated and united community of his people, imagined as within a circle. The base of the tepee is circular, and an encampment of tepees was usually arranged in a circle. Black Elk’s vision of the horses in the four different directions has visual similarities to a mandala, a circular design with geometric components originally used in Hinduism and Buddhism to express spiritual wholeness. The cup that contains the sky, the sacred pipe, the four-rayed herb, and the flowering stick are sacred objects that will recur in Black Elk’s later visions. He will incorporate them into his healing practices and the rituals he performs for the community as a holy man. The bison, which the Sioux discovered on the plains when they migrated from the woodlands of the upper Midwest in the eighteenth century, and horses, introduced by the Spanish in the early sixteenth century, were sacred animals to the Sioux, as were eagles. The eagle might almost be considered a totem for Black Elk—an animal that is especially significant to him. He is given the name Eagle Wing Stretches, and throughout the rest of the narrative, he reports feeling pulled back into the world of his vision when he hears the whistle of an eagle. Black Elk’s vision foreshadows the destiny of the Sioux, who were once prosperous and free but who now, with the coming of the whites, have lost their sense of community, their coherence. As his story proceeds, the accuracy of this vision is revealed, which may raise questions as to whether Black Elk has shaped his vision in hindsight. That is a question that simply cannot be answered; the narrative asks the reader to accept the validity of mystical experience. How much Neihardt’s editing and Black Elk’s conversion to the Catholic faith later in his life influenced the description of the iconography of his vision is difficult to know. Certainly, its number symbology can be compared to that of the Judeo-Christian tradition; the symbolic objects (the cup, the flowering stick) have even been compared to designs in the Tarot deck. Perhaps the early psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who theorized that certain symbols and images (archetypes) have meanings common to all human beings, however unconscious we may be of them, advanced the more accurate interpretation.


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Glossary Greasy Grass A translation of the Lakota term for the area around the Little Bighorn River. bay a reddish-brown horse; the reddish-brown color of such a horse. buckskin a yellowish-grey horse; the yellowish-grey color of such a horse. sorrel a light reddish-brown horse; the light reddish-brown color of such a horse. Nation’s hoop (also subsequently called “sacred hoop”) an imagined circle, representing the traditional community identity and the social and cultural coherence of the Sioux nation. counting coup the Sioux ritual of striking an enemy who has fallen, wounded or dead; the first person to count coup is considered bravest of the group, almost as brave as the one who has brought the enemy down. drouth

a variant spelling of drought.

waga chun rustling tree, cottonwood. tremolo

a vocal call made by a repetitive wavering of the voice.

four-rayed having four branches or leaves radiating out from a central point.

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Chapter 4

The Bison Hunt

Summary Black Elk regains consciousness after experiencing his vision and feels as if he has returned home after a journey. His parents tell him that he was deathly ill for twelve days and that Whirlwind Chaser, the medicine man, cured him. Black Elk’s father gives Whirlwind Chaser a horse to express his gratitude. Black Elk wants to tell people about his experience, but he feels that the meaning of the vision cannot be put into words; he is afraid that he will be misunderstood. Whirlwind Chaser tells Black Elk’s parents that there is something special about him, which makes Black Elk afraid that he knows about the vision. Black Elk feels alienated from those around him and wishes he were back in the place of his vision. He goes hunting to forget about the vision, but cannot shoot a bird because he remembers that the Grandfathers of his vision told him he would be a relative of the birds. He does shoot a frog, however, and then weeps at having killed it. Standing Bear speaks to affirm that Black Elk suffered his illness while the Indians were moving camp. He says that after he recovered, Black Elk was not himself and seemed more like an old man than a young boy. Standing Bear goes on to say that the big bison hunt, which took place shortly after Black Elk recovered, distracted people such that they did not notice Black Elk’s strangeness anymore. Black Elk continues his story about the bison hunt. A crier came to the Indians one day and told them to break camp because a large herd of bison could be hunted nearby. Standing Bear remembers that the hunt was in July and that, at the age of thirteen, he killed his first mature buffalo. Black Elk describes the great celebration after the successful hunt and the games the young boys played, including endurance trials, as part of the festivities.


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Commentary As Black Elk grows older, the meaning of his vision becomes clearer to him, but he felt alienated as a boy because of his unique experience of the vision. Black Elk frequently feels as if he is pulled back into the world of his vision when he sees or feels something that reminds him of the vision—in this case the birds his father is hunting. At these times, Black Elk often says he feels “queer” (disconnected from the present reality) and longs to be in the world of his vision. Whirlwind Chaser recognizes Black Elk as someone who participated in the sacred, however, and alerts his parents, using language similar to the Grandfathers’ language in Black Elk’s vision. The adults marked the child’s destiny and nurtured his special gift. The acknowledgment of intuitive or extrasensory experience is an outstanding aspect of Indian culture. Indians placed value on this kind of experience and did not think it pathological or criminal. For the most part, however, this is a straightforward chapter about cultural practices after the more abstract relation of the dream vision. Some of this chapter’s content is of almost anthropological interest. A crier alerts the Indians that bison are to be hunted close by, pointing out that the Indians did not keep livestock for food; they relied on animals in the wild. They had scouts to look for those animals, just as they might have scouts keeping track of an enemy. They break camp to go to where they might find the animals. The crier guides them on their way, even directing them when to let their ponies rest, to dig some turnips they come upon, and to be watchful of their children. The scouts come to the council tepee, smoke, and reveal the location of the bison herd. The crier had all the hunters ride out to kill bison. The hunters rode almost naked, outfitted with bows, arrows, and sharpened knives. The Sioux, great warriors, borrowed much from their war practices for hunting. Standing Bear’s story about killing his first mature bison makes it understood that the hunt was a demonstration of manhood as well as a result of the necessity for food. Until that day, he had killed only a calf, but he was determined, at the age of 13, to show that he was a man and kill a yearling. The reader might remember this story when Black Elk states, toward the end of his narrative, that an indication of the degeneration of Indian society is how late boys become men. Standing Bear also says that the women are making the tremolo of joy at the hunt, the same kind of vocal cry that they use to cheer a war party.

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Butchering took place at the site of the hunt, and the fresh meat was loaded onto the horses as they went home. The little boys, too hungry to wait for the feast later in the evening, ate as much fresh liver as they could. When the hunters returned home, the advisors ate first, and then they invited others into their tepee to eat. The women make drying racks out of branches and sticks to dry the meat for long-term preservation. Everyone is happy at the feast that night, which included dancing and singing. These events that Black Elk identifies as happy times have to do with the traditional life of the Indians; the Indians are happy as long as they can pursue life freely engaged in their traditional cultural practices. Sharing the meat reveals the communal nature of Indian life. The advisors do not hunt, but they are the first to enjoy the meat from the hunt because their wisdom is so important to the others. Their invitation to all others to partake of what is a gift to them exhibits their generosity. In a children’s game, associated with the hunt celebration, the boys act out stealing the meat. Black Elk really tries to steal a bison tongue and is badly frightened when he thought he was caught; in another game, the young boys compete for the distinction of having the most chapped breast—in other words, having suffered the most exposure to the elements; in another, the boys put sunflower seeds on their wrists and endure the pain of their being burned off. If they cry, they are called women. These games illustrate the importance of the hunt and the value the Sioux placed on physical bravery. Throughout these events, Black Elk is reminded of the world of the Grandfathers when he sees animals or birds that were in his vision or hears a sound, such as thunder or the whistle of an eagle that he associates with his vision.

Glossary Minneconjou One of the six bands that made up the Lakota Sioux tribe, of which the Oglala , Black Elk’s band, is also one. crier

an official who shouts out announcements.

scout

a person sent out to observe the tactics of an opponent.

chacun sha sha the bark of the red willow.


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Chapter 5

At the Soldiers’ Town

Summary The six Lakota bands (Ogalalas, Brules, Sans Arcs, Black Kettles, Hunkpapas, and Minneconjous) who camped together, scattered after the bison hunt. Some Oglalas went to Fort Robinson (Soldiers’ Town); others stayed behind with Crazy Horse, who wanted nothing to do with white men. Black Elk joined his relatives near Soldiers’ Town, where he saw his first white man, and camped there all winter. He tells about playing with the other children on sleds made of bison jaws and ribs. At one point during their stay, soldiers threatened to punish the Indians because an Indian boy mischievously cut off the top of a flagpole at the fort, but Red Cloud intervened and made peace. Red Cloud was a great chief, but he quit fighting after the treaty of 1868, which was five years before. Black Elk goes deer hunting with his father and feels back in the world of his vision when he hears the whistle of a spotted eagle. He tells his father that they need not pursue the deer because the deer will be brought to them, and that comes to pass; his father kills two deer. During his time at Soldiers’ Town, Watanye teaches Black Elk to spear fish. Watanye’s mouth was covered with sores that bled when he laughed.

Commentary Black Elk begins to feel a little more comfortable thinking about his vision. He says that whenever he hears thunder, which was part of his vision, he feels happy. Later, however, he gets a “queer” feeling when he hears the whistle of a spotted eagle and he feels once more back in the world of his vision. This conflict contributes to the developmental aspect of the story: How will Black Elk grow into his role as a visionary when he lives in the ordinary world? He is happy in the world of hunting, fishing, and children’s games, but he received a higher call from his vision. The eagle always reminds him of the name the Grandfathers of his vision gave him—Eagle Wing Stretches.

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Black Elk describes fishing with his friends, kissing the fish as they are caught, throwing back those that are too small to use. The Indian relationship with the environment does not allow waste, especially as compared with the habits of the white men making their way westward. The Indians also have a kinship with the creatures of nature that the whites, who destroyed the bison herd, do not have. Black Elk’s attempts to learn spear fishing from Watanye make for a humorous, if not slightly ghoulish, anecdote: Watanye laughed until his mouth bled when Black Elk fell into the water. The Indians’ stay near the fort is one of the last best times they had. During this time, Black Elk got used to the white soldiers at the fort, although, at first, he thought they looked sick. Black Elk’s account of such pre-reservation experiences, when the Indians are still relatively free on the plains, is an especially valuable part of his narrative. The white man’s encroachment, however, and his diminishment of the bison herds to make way for the railroad, seriously threatens the freedom that the Indians enjoyed before they were relegated to the reservations. During the time that Black Elk describes here, the Lakota still do the things that defined them as Indians, such as cutting tepee poles, fishing, and hunting. Like the bison hunt that Black Elk describes in the previous chapter, these are happy times for him because the Indians have not yet lost their traditional identity.


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Chapter 6

High Horse’s Courting

Summary Black Elk relates Watanye’s story: The Indian High Horse is lovesick for an Indian girl whose parents guard her jealously. He offers the parents two horses for their daughter, then four, but the parents continue to refuse. The girl herself will not run away with him because she wants the distinction of being bought. High Horse consults with his friend Red Deer, who advises him to steal the girl. High Horse sneaks into the girl’s tepee, but frightens her, and the alerted adults chase him away. In another unsuccessful attempt, Red Deer strips High Horse and paints him to look like a spirit, but High Horse falls asleep. The terrified people who discover him in the morning chase him from camp. Finally, High Horse and Red Deer decide to go on the warpath. After killing the Crow horse guard, they steal some horses belonging to the Crow Indians and offer the whole herd to the girl’s parents who give her to High Horse as a reward for his persistence and ingenuity.

Commentary In a novel, this anecdote would be called an inset story—a complete and separate story set within the larger narrative. Black Elk repeats a story to entertain and emphasize the values of the group. The story shows the bravery and ingenuity of the courting Indian, for example, who risks death to try to take his lover. It depicts the traditional hostility between the Crow and the Sioux and turns the tables on the Crow, who had a reputation for horse thievery among the Sioux. The story emphasizes the importance of the horse and represents Indian courting and marriage practices. The Sioux did not have formal marriage ceremonies, but they valued fidelity and loyalty and observed clear moral standards in their sexual behavior. The tribe banished adulterers and promiscuous people, and sometimes the nose of the female culprit was cut off. Most Sioux were monogamous, although some men took multiple wives (Sitting Bull, for example, had two). The groom gave a dowry to the bride’s parents, indicating that something of value had exchanged hands. The girl in the story who is worth an entire herd

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of ponies is very valuable indeed, and High Horse’s act announces that publicly. The story dramatizes a romantic love that most readers can empathize with. It also shows the importance of sharing stories as a friendly act and as a way to pass on the values of the tribe.


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Chapter 7

Wasichus in the Hills

Summary Black Elk is eleven years old. It is 1874, and his people are camped in the Black Hills, in what is now South Dakota. At times, Black Elk remembers his vision. He sees a flock of swallows before a storm, for example, and cannot stone them as other boys are doing because he remembers that the Grandfathers of his vision told him that he is a relative of the birds. One day, he goes hunting for squirrels with the other boys, and he hears a voice telling him to go back. He and his friends return and find that their people are breaking camp because Chips, the medicine man, heard a voice telling him that the Indians are being threatened, and they must move. They move camp several times, finally locating at Fort Robinson (Soldiers’ Town). Later, Black Elk learns that the threat came from General Custer (whom he calls Pahuska or Long Hair) who had entered the Black Hills. The terms of the 1868 treaty that Red Cloud signed with the U.S. government, giving the land to the Sioux, forbade Custer’s advance into the Black Hills. But Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills and the Indians hear that white men from around the Missouri River came to the Black Hills looking for gold. The Indians are divided as to how to respond. Red Cloud, who is at Fort Robinson, is more moderate than Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who are in different locations, and the Indians at Fort Robinson think that Red Cloud and his people are defending the Wasichus; they call them the “Hang-Around-the-Fort” people. In the spring (1875), when Black Elk is 12 years old, more soldiers come up from Fort Laramie and go into the Black Hills. Neihardt adds in a footnote that Col. Dodge with 400 men and 75 wagons came on a geological expedition and stayed through October. In June (the Moon of Making Fat), a sun dance takes place. In September (the Moon When the Calves Grow Hair), there is a big meeting between the whites and the Indians, including Cheyenne and Arapahoe as well as Lakota. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull do not attend.

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Black Elk’s father tells him that the “Grandfather at Washington” (U. S. President Ulysses Grant) wants to lease the Black Hills in order to mine for gold, and the white men say that if the Indians do not consent, they will take the hills anyway. Hearing that many white men are coming into the hills and establishing towns, the Indians decide to join Crazy Horse. They move to where he is on the Powder River, making several camps along the way. Black Elk, saddened, tries to regain some of his vision, but cannot. Winning some coffee in a pony race with an Indian named Fat cheers him. He thinks hard about his vision, and that the white wing of the wind that the Second Grandfather gave him empowered his pony. Black Elk’s people meet some of Red Cloud’s people, who soon leave for the safety of the whites when they discover that the others are going to meet Crazy Horse. As they continue on their way, they find a dead Lakota, who seems to have died of old age as he was going to visit his relatives. Black Elk grows eager to meet his relative Crazy Horse, whom he has seen often and about whom he has heard many stories. He relates a tale of Crazy Horse’s bravery in rescuing his brother from the Crows. He says that Crazy Horse was always with Hump, the greatest warrior of their people up until then, and that he must have learned from him. Crazy Horse was the first chief to come from Black Elk’s family, which had a tradition of holy men, and Crazy Horse became a chief because of the power he received from a vision when he entered the spirit world. Crazy Horse can easily re-enter the spirit world and his behavior is sometimes odd. He doesn’t have much to do with other people except children. He has been friendly to Black Elk, calling him into his tepee. Wounded only twice, he is a powerful warrior. Black Elk states that if the whites had not murdered Crazy Horse, the Indians would still own the Black Hills. The whites did not kill Crazy Horse in battle, but lied to entrap him. When Black Elk’s people meet up with Crazy Horse, they camp some distance away and build a corral to guard their ponies from the Crow Indians. But, still, a Crow is caught attempting to steal a horse in the dead of the night, and then killed. The “counting coup” ritual is explained. The women cut up the dead Crow Indian with axes and scatter his parts around, and they all join in the “kill dance.” They move camp. The guard paints his face black to indicate that he was ready to kill the enemy. They meet one of Red Cloud’s people who says that the Crow Indians killed all in his band except him.


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During that winter, white runners come and tell Black Elk’s people that they must come back to Fort Robinson or there will be serious trouble, but they do not return because it is too cold to move and they are on their own land anyway. During a thaw in February, Black Elk’s people start for Fort Robinson. Crazy Horse stays behind on the Powder. In March, the U.S. Cavalry raids Crazy Horse’s village, killing men, women, and children, and stealing horses. Crazy Horse mobilizes a band of warriors and fights back, eventually regaining the horses. Black Elk states that he and his people did not learn of this for some time, but when they did hear it, they painted their faces black.

Commentary This chapter records an important passage in the history of the West as tension between the Indians and the whites continued to mount. The U.S. Government began making treaties with the Sioux in 1851, but in 1871 Congress stopped recognizing the Indian tribes as sovereign nations with treaty-making prerogatives. The treaty of 1851, between Red Cloud and the U.S. government, recognized the Black Hills as Indian territory. But that land became too valuable for American empire-builders to ignore. With the help of Martha Jane Canary, commonly known as Calamity Jane, General George Armstrong Custer led the Black Hills Gold Discovery Expedition in 1874. (Custer’s personal vanity prompted him to wear his blonde hair longer than most men did at the time, hence the name Long Hair.) His discovery of gold brought many adventurers and settlers to the area. The Sioux did not especially value gold and the whites’ obsession with it bemused them. They soon realized, however, that the whites’ greed for gold and for land would mean the end of their own freedom. The Transcontinental Railroad also meant the appropriation of Indian land. Economic motives combined with misguided humanitarian and missionary efforts to civilize the Indians. The U.S. government began to establish agencies to manage the Indian population. They built houses for the Indians, taking away the power of the circular tepee, and began to confine the nomadic Indians to areas that would be known as reservations (Rosebud, Pine Ridge, and so on). Some Indians are far more cooperative than others and do not resist the efforts of the whites to contain them. Red Cloud was such an “agency chief ” who tried to reconcile his fellow Indians to their new life. Red Cloud’s efforts appear to be pragmatic, trying to guarantee his people food and shelter as the whites took more and more of their land, but some Indians saw him as

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a collaborator with the whites and a traitor to the Indian cause. Many times throughout his story, Black Elk stops to reflect on how the greed of the white man has displaced the Indians. The dead Lakota, lost while searching for his relatives, seems like something of an omen to Black Elk and foreshadows the numerous deaths that will occur among the increasingly displaced Sioux tribe. Black Elk offers a rather detailed portrait of Crazy Horse, an enigmatic figure in Indian history, who Black Elk thinks was the greatest of all Sioux chiefs. Unlike Red Cloud, Crazy Horse resists the whites’ efforts to contain the Indians. He refuses to negotiate with whites and remains unreconciled to the imposed changes in the Indians’ way of life. He will prove to be a ferocious warrior, but his reputation as a chief rested on his powers as a holy man. Black Elk continues to express frustration and sadness at not being able to implement his vision. He is fighting the greed of the white man, and as the Indians are culturally displaced and have to contend with subsistence-level concerns, such as food shortages, there is little support for him to develop into the holy man or leader his vision seems to call him to be.

Glossary sweat tepee a structure used by the Sioux for purification rituals, in which an individual was induced to perspire profusely in steam generated by pouring water on heated rocks. Kill dance a ritual dance designed to intensify enthusiasm for battle.


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Chapter 8

The Fight With Three Stars

Summary Black Elk’s father tells his son that Red Cloud and some other chiefs will sell out to the white men and that the rest of the Indians must fight from now on for their land. Many small bands of Indians join together. Black Elk’s aunt gives him a six-shooter and he feels like a man, although he is not big physically. Some Indian scouts report that white men shot at them on the Bozeman Trail, which a treaty was supposed to have closed since 1868. Black Elk’s people ride out to attack. The whites circle their wagons and shoot at the Indians. Black Elk feels very brave, but the Indians eventually leave because they cannot penetrate the circled wagons. They join other scattered tribes of Indians and travel quickly to the Rosebud River to meet with Crazy Horse. When they are gathered together, the Indians hold a sun dance, presided over by Sitting Bull. First a tree is found that will occupy a place in the middle of a big circle. Pregnant women are the first to dance around it. A very brave warrior counts coup upon the tree and gives away gifts. Young maidens chop the tree down and warriors charge into the center where the tree had stood, which is now a sacred spot. This act ensures their safety in battle. Everyone feasts. The next day, the tree is planted in the center of the dancing place. Nursing babies are laid at its base. Young children’s ears are pierced. The next day the dancing begins. Dancers are tied to the tree by a thong of rawhide inserted through the skin of their backs or chests. They dance, pulling at the strip of rawhide until they cannot bear it or until their flesh rips. The young children, such as Black Elk, amuse themselves by teasing the adults, who are supposed to tolerate anything that day. When the sun dance is over, Indian scouts enter the camp and report that Crazy Horse has routed soldiers who were camping up the river, prepared to attack during the sun dance. Black Elk’s friend Iron Hawk, a Hunkpapa who was with Crazy Horse that day, relates the story of the battle: Two war parties went out to fight the white men, who were joined by Crow and Shoshone Indians in a fierce battle that lasted all day. The Indians almost lost heart until someone exhorted them to remember

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those at home. As Iron Hawk leads his injured pony away from the battle, he comes upon three Lakota who were roasting and eating a bison that they had killed. He joins them for the feast. One of the men treats his injury. Another Lakota enters the scene and shames them for eating while others are fighting. Iron Hawk rides back to the scene of battle where it is difficult to tell who is winning. When it is dark, they ride back to camp to guard the women and children, and the whites do not follow. Standing Bear adds to the report. He was one of many who were not in the fight. The next day, they rode out to the scene of the battle and dug up the white soldiers’ bodies and took the blankets they were buried in; he himself cut the finger off a dead man to take his ring. He describes one of the bodies as “a black Wasichu,” which Neihardt identifies as a “Negro.” One of the Indians scalped a body. They returned to the camp, where they stayed for several days before moving on to the Greasy Grass (the Little Bighorn River).

Commentary Many topics that Black Elk discusses in his narrative are of ethnographic interest: they provide readers with detailed cultural information that could otherwise be obtained only through careful anthropological research. His description of the sun dance is such a topic. The sun dance, which continues to be performed by the Sioux in the present day, is a deeply sacred ritual performed around a tree placed at the center of an area representing the nation’s hoop. The dancers’ flesh is pierced, usually on the chest and/or back, and rawhide thongs are drawn through the piercings and attached to the tree. The dancers dance around the tree, sometimes for hours, pulling on the thongs until they break through the flesh. In a related sun dance ritual, men would carve small pieces of flesh from their bodies as an offering to the Great Spirit, an act called leaving a piece of flesh. (At least oneaccount reports that Sitting Bull left 100 pieces of flesh at the sun dance Black Elk describes here.) The dance is performed during the full moon in June or July, when it is often quite hot, and the dancers undergo purification rituals and do not eat or drink during the dance. Thus, the sun dance is partly a test of physical endurance, but more importantly it symbolizes the dancers’ desire to break the bonds of flesh in order to access the spirit.


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Some of the symbology of the sun dance is similar to that of Black Elk’s earlier vision (see Chapter 3) because both rely on traditional Sioux imagery. The flowering tree of the sun dance creates a representation of the original state of the innocence and prosperity of all things and is similar to the flowering stick of Black Elk’s vision. The circular path of the dancers around the tree invokes the powers of the four quarters of the earth. Pregnant women and nursing mothers represent fertility as well. The battle with General Crook that is reported here took place on June 17, 1876, just eight days before the Battle of Little Bighorn (Custer’s Last Stand). The Indians are increasingly threatened; they are not only being displaced and contained, they are being assaulted. The attitude of the U.S. Government is that national prosperity and expansion can be bought at the expense of the Indian population—highly ironic in a country that fought to free itself from the dominion of another nation exactly 100 years before.

Glossary Three Stars

General Crook.

six-shooter a revolver having a cylinder that holds six cartridges; specifically, such a revolver with a long barrel and of relatively large caliber of the kind usually used in the western United States in the last half of the nineteenth century. Bozeman Trail the trail through Sioux country that was cleared by whites as a means of reaching goldmining operations in Montana.

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Chapter 9

The Rubbing Out of Long Hair

Summary Black Elk participates in the well-known Battle of Little Big Horn. Although Crazy Horse fought with the white men on the Rosebud River, it was only to prevent them from attacking at the sun dance. During this time, the Indians just wanted to be left alone because they were, after all, on their own land. Feeling increasingly threatened, Black Elk relocates with his people to a big camp near the Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn River). The medicine man Hairy Chin dresses and paints Black Elk as a bear to participate in a curing ceremony for Rattling Hawk, who was shot in the hip at the Battle of the Rosebud the week before. When Black Elk dresses as a bear, he regains some sense of his vision and can feel that danger is approaching. Rattling Hawk is healed, and Black Elk and the other boys go swimming later to wash their paint off. Everyone around them is having “kill talks,” recounting the brave deeds that have recently been performed, and dancing. His father tells him to guard the horses and to be prepared to come back quickly to camp. As the day goes on, he gets hot and goes swimming. As he is in the water, with his cousin watering the horses nearby, criers from various camps ride in and warn that chargers (the U.S. Seventh Cavalry on horseback) are advancing. His father orders him to take a gun to his brother, who rode to join the Hunkpapas. They join many of the Hunkpapas who take refuge in the woods, where soldiers shoot at them (Neihardt notes that these soldiers are with Major Marcus Reno’s detachment). The cry goes up that Crazy Horse is coming. The scene is one of pandemonium with Indians, whites, and horses grappling with each other and fighting in the water. A Lakota shoots a white man (probably Captain French, Neihardt notes) who was very brave. Black Elk is ordered to scalp a man who is down, and Black Elk shoots him in the forehead. Far off, Indian warriors are in a whirl of dust; Custer has attacked from the north end, Neihardt notes. Black Elk goes home to show his mother his first scalp. Standing Bear adds to the story: Sixteen years old at the time, he was in the Minneconjou camp, the third from the south of the seven Indian camps along the Little Big Horn River. He


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had eaten and was swimming when his father told him to look after the horses. He saw Reno and his men riding into the Hunkpapa camp just south of the Minneconjous. He, his brother, and his uncle ride out to fight Custer’s detachment coming from the north. The battle scene was chaotic. There were so many Indians that Standing Bear says they needed no guns; the horses’ hooves would have done enough damage. They were all crazy and regretfully tell of one Indian scalping another dead Indian. The battle continued until sundown when the Indians drove the soldiers into the hills. It resumed the next day when Indians and soldiers shot at each other as the soldiers came out of the hills to get water. The Indians finally rode back to their camps when General Terry’s troops came to the aid of the survivors. The troops did not pursue the Indians. Iron Hawk, who was fourteen years old at the time, adds to the story: He, too, dressed and painted himself for battle, armed with only a bow and arrow. He tells of a Shyela Indian who was so sacred that he rode into battle in the thick of bullets firing at him, but the soldiers could not hurt him. Iron Hawk says that he was so angry thinking about the Indian women and children who were frightened that he beat to death a soldier he had shot. When the soldiers were beaten and had retreated, the Indian women closed in and began to strip the bodies. One of the soldiers pretended to be dead, until the women tried to castrate him. He then jumped up and fought them, but they stabbed him, and he died. Iron Hawk says it was funny to see. Black Elk continues. He and some other boys rode around the scene of the battle, shooting arrows into the wounded soldiers. He stole a watch from one. His cousin, called Black Wasichu, was severely wounded in the battle. His father and Black Elk’s father were so angry that they butchered a white man. Black Elk says that the white man was fat, and his meat looked good, but they did not eat any. He and some other boys surround a soldier who has hidden in a bush and kill him. Black Elk’s mother joins them. Black Elk scalps a soldier for another Indian boy. He says that he is not at all sorry for participating in the battle because the Indians were in their own land, doing no harm, and were attacked without provocation. The Indians danced and sang all night.

Commentary The Battle of the Little Big Horn (June 25, 1876) is popularly known as Custer’s Last Stand in reference to General George Armstrong Custer, the commander of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, who was killed and whose forces were defeated in this attack. He had presidential

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ambitions, and one of his reasons for conducting this battle was the hope of a dramatic victory that would put him in the public eye. To this end, he engaged a newspaper reporter to accompany him. Custer committed at least two great wrongs in this battle: Not only was he participating in what became a genocidal mission, quelling hostile Indians for the U.S. Government, but, without adequate information, he led his own men into a battle that they could not possibly survive, purely to further his personal ambitions. It is estimated that as many as 12,000 Indians, of whom 4,000 were warriors, gathered near the Little Big Horn River, in what is now Montana, to meet with Sitting Bull. The encampment included Lakota bands (Oglalas, Brules, Sans Arcs, Minneconjous, and Hunkpapas) as well as Cheyenne and Blackfeet. The Sioux had a reputation as warriors, and this chapter gives us a glimpse of some of their practices, including war cries, horsemanship, and scalping. This chapter clarifies the position that women held in battle, which was to encourage the warriors and later to carry off the spoils of war. The Sioux, thinking of the helpless people at home that they were defending, willingly faced death in battle. Black Elk’s account also reveals how the cavalry attack, which occurred while the Indians were swimming and eating, surprised the Indians. The seven Indian camps were ranged along the west bank of the Little Big Horn River. Shortly after 3 p.m., General Marcus Reno attacked the south end of the Indian encampment from the east; within the hour, Custer advanced from the north to attack the camps on the north end. By 4:40 p.m., the defeated cavalry troops were forced into retreat. The Battle of Little Big Horn dominates this chapter, but recognizing that Black Elk’s first participation in a healing ceremony is recorded here as well is important. In his development as a tribal healer, that event is significant. Although the Indians will suffer further losses as the whites retaliate for their defeat at Little Big Horn, Black Elk seems to be advancing in his journey to claim the powers granted in his vision.

Glossary charger

a horse ridden in battle or parade.

fronters

Indian warriors placed in the front line of battle.


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Chapter 10

Walking the Black Road

Summary The battle does not establish the Indians’ claim on their land; the Black Hills are being sold to the whites. Black Elk suspects that there is truth to the rumor that a few Indian chiefs may have gotten drunk and agreed to the purchase. Black Elk’s band moves camp several times. They discover that the soldiers’ horses befouled the site of the sun dance. Apparently, natural occurrences and changes in the weather have made impressions on a big rock bluff, leaving pictures of soldiers hanging downward. Members of the tribe claim that these impressions were on the rock bluff prior to the last battle, perhaps as an omen. By August (the Moon of Black Cherries), they hear that soldiers are approaching again. They move camp, burning the grass behind them as they go so that the soldiers’ horses will go hungry if they try to follow. In September (the Moon of the Black Calf ), forces under General Crook fought with some Indians in another camp. Crazy Horse comes to the aid of the Indians, but they are feeling increasingly embattled. Wherever they go, soldiers come to kill them, despite the treaties they have signed with the U.S. Government. Black Elk said that, in the summer, the Indians had numbered in the thousands; now they are less than two thousand in number. They begin to move west. The hard winter comes early. Many Indians resign from war. Indian agencies are established, and some Indian bands go to the agencies. Those who do not, like Black Elk’s group, are almost starving. The Indians eat their ponies that died of starvation. In November, Col. Mackenzie attacks a band of Shyelas as they sleep, many of them fighting naked in the snow. Those who survived joined Black Elk’s people, but there was nothing to eat; they headed for Soldiers’ Town to surrender. Crazy Horse is acting stranger. In January, General Miles attacks their camp on the Tongue River. The Indians have little ammunition and retreat, in a blizzard, to the Little Powder. In February or March, Spotted Tail, Crazy Horse’s uncle, comes to try to convince Crazy Horse

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to surrender to the whites. In April, they head for Soldiers’ Town (Fort Robinson), and Black Elk hears a rumor that Crazy Horse surrendered. At Fort Robinson, the Indians finally have enough to eat.

Commentary This chapter describes the increasing fragmentation and dislocation of the Indians following the Battle of Little Big Horn. The American Government regards them as hostile forces occupying U.S. Territory. No longer recognized as sovereign nations with treaty-making prerogatives, the Indian tribes lose their land that is sold and simply taken from them. Death is frequently the alternative to the process of assimilation that is being more and more forcefully imposed upon them. The bison are on the verge of extinction and the curtailment of the Indians’ movements does not allow them to search for food. Their horses and ammunition are being taken from them. The decrease in population that Black Elk notes here reflects an even bigger decrease across the country. It is estimated that 5 million native people inhabited what is now the United States when European explorers first entered the continent. By 1910, the number of Indians dropped to 210,000. This chapter takes its title from Black Elk’s vision (see Chapter 3), in which the fourth Grandfather showed him a black road leading from west to east and explained that it was a road of great trouble. Now, the road of Black Elk’s people becomes literally black as they leave a trail of burned grass behind them, hoping to prevent the mounted forces of the U.S. Government from following.

Glossary Agencies organizations established by the U.S. Government to contain and control Indian life; at this point in American history, the term was used synonymously with “reservations”.


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Chapter 11

The Killing of Crazy Horse

Summary Black Elk and his father head out of Red Cloud Agency to go to Spotted Tail’s camp, but Red Cloud’s people overtake them, who tell them to go back. Black Elk learns later that Crazy Horse had sent them away, thinking they would be safer because he knew trouble was ahead. The rumor is spreading that Crazy Horse is going to war again, but Black Elk knows he has no ammunition and believes that the Wasichus (whites) have spread the rumor. Crazy Horse will not cooperate with the whites; he will not allow himself to become assimilated. He refuses to go to Washington, D.C. with the whites and some other Indians for a show of conciliation. Soldiers bring Crazy Horse into Fort Robinson (Soldiers’ Town) with the understanding that he will not be harmed if he will simply come and talk to the Wasichu chief, but the soldiers lied. Black Elk later learns that he was imprisoned. When he tries to fight his way out with a knife, he is stabbed with a bayonet and dies. There is much mourning; Black Elk and his father cry all night. In the morning, Crazy Horse’s father and mother come and put his body in a box and carry it away on horseback. No one knows where he is buried.

Commentary Crazy Horse refused to recognize the authority of the whites’ Great Father, saying that his only father was the Great Spirit. He was a warrior and, unlike Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, he refused to acquiesce in the federal program for managing the Indians. He would not give up his identity to become a docile person living in a house on a reservation. Crazy Horse’s death is a tragedy for the Oglala Sioux, for whom he was an inspiring leader, and a discredit to the U.S. Government, which was systematically eliminating all troublesome Indians. Crazy Horse remains a legendary figure in the history of the American West.

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Chapter 12

Grandmother’s Land

Summary Black Elk’s people do not want to live on the reservations (agencies) that they are being driven to, and their former places near the Powder River are changed, so they go to Canada to join Sitting Bull. Black Elk hunts for bison with his uncle Running Horse and later with Iron Tail. There are several skirmishes with the Crow Indians and Black Elk uses the power granted by his vision to bring his companions out of danger. He records the courage of Brave Wolf, who sacrificed his own life to save a girl from the Crow, and of his cousin Hard-to-Hit, who was killed defending another Lakota from the Crow. Black Elk feels glad that his power is growing. The winter is difficult, but in the midst of a blizzard, the voices of his vision guide Black Elk to a herd of bison. He and his father come across two other Lakota on their way to the bison, and together they slaughter eight of them. They butcher them, and have a great feast, dancing and singing. Encamped in a shelter built from the bison hides, they hear a group of porcupines crying in the cold during the night; Black Elk says they felt sorry for the animals and so did not hurt them. They load their horses with meat, caching the rest, and return home. It remains so cold that five of his horses freeze. Black Elk’s people are sad to be out of their own country. The older people tell stories of the good times, now past, and Black Elk himself is homesick.

Commentary This chapter continues the bitter process of Sioux dislocation. Black Elk feels somewhat like himself because he can use the power granted him in his vision to help his people. The hunt is successful and securing so much meat in such difficult times provides high drama. But the overriding reality is that the Indians are not in their own land, and are therefore unhappy.


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Black Elk’s account includes elements of human interest. The story of Brave Wolf ’s saving of the beautiful girl exemplifies the qualities of courage and selflessness that were highly valued by the Sioux. The mourning ritual for his cousin Hard-to-Hit is a daylong wailing. He liked his cousin, but did not feel like crying all day; nevertheless, he did it, and it was “hard work.” The episode with the porcupines indicates the men’s capacity for sympathy. The predicament of the small creatures touches the four men, who had just slaughtered eight bison. These small anecdotal episodes depict a dimension of the Sioux that defies the warrior and savage stereotypes that existed in the popular imagination of the time.

Glossary roan a horse of a reddish color that is mixed with some white; the color of such a horse. papa

dried meat.

Haho

a prayer-like utterance.

cache to store in a hidden place (from the French verb cacher, to hide).

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Chapter 13

The Compelling Fear

Summary Two of the families in Black Elk’s group, with only five horses, start out for the place where they used to live. At one encampment, while out with the horses, Black Elk gets the strange feeling that he associates with his vision again. He hears a voice telling him to watch. Climbing to the top of a bluff, he sees two Indians (later, he learns they were Blackfeet) looking out at his village below and planning an attack. Praying to the grandfathers of his vision, he runs to tell his people that they must leave at once. As they flee, crossing a dangerously flooded creek, a thundercloud comes up from behind to protect them. Black Elk senses strongly the thunder beings of his vision and feels more than ever that they empower him. The people escape successfully and cross the Missouri on a steamboat. They camp with other Indians who are also off the reservation. Soldiers take away their guns and most of their horses. The Indians conduct a sun dance and Black Elk, at the age of sixteen, can now think of nothing but his vision. He is frustrated and afraid because he has been given a great vision but can do nothing with it. Every time a thunderstorm comes up, he is afraid that the thunder beings will demand to know what he has done. He hears the crows and the coyotes call constantly to him, “It is time.” His anxiety lessens in the winter, when he turns seventeen, because the thunderstorms are fewer. But he continues to act somewhat strange, and his parents call in the medicine man, Black Road, believing that the illness that their son had at the age of nine continues to affect him. Black Elk tells Black Road of his vision, and Black Road advises him that he must perform the duty he was given in his vision and that first he must hold a horse dance.


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Commentary This chapter represents the tragic situation of those Indians who are making a last-ditch effort to avoid agency life. The U.S. Government’s process of disarming the Indians and taking their horses in an effort to subdue hostilities also makes it difficult for the Indians to move camp and to hunt. When they lose their horses, the Indians begin to lose their traditional way of life. This chapter is one of several that record the passage from pre-reservation to reservation history. The chapter represents a passage in Black Elk’s life as well. His is the classic situation of the hero on the threshold of empowerment, trying to understand what must be done to take the next step. It is important that he finds a mentor in Black Road, who advises him that he must create a ritual that will allow him to enact his vision.

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Chapter 14

The Horse Dance

Summary Black Road and an old man, Bear Sings, paint a sacred tepee for Black Elk with scenes from his vision, the objects associated with the four directions, and bison and elk. They tell Black Elk he must purify himself in a sweat lodge. He teaches them the songs from his vision. His mother and father help assemble what is needed to enact the vision: horses, riders, and maidens all painted and decorated. They enact the vision and as they do, Black Elk sees the vision again that he originally had, and which the enactment is but a shadow of. He sings to the grandfathers to help him and the thunder rolls in, but only a little sprinkle of rain falls on the people. There is much dancing and rejoicing. Black Road passes the sacred pipe. Black Elk is happy. People tell him that those who were sick have become well. His fear is gone. He is now one of the medicine men. He gets up every morning to see the daybreak star, which is called the star of understanding.

Commentary This chapter presents the importance for the Sioux of acting out the private vision of Black Elk in a public ritual for the entire community to see. It emphasizes the esteem in which the visionary was held, and the shared understanding that the power of the vision would pass through him to his people. The performance of the vision also serves to develop Black Elk’s character, as he now takes a further step in assuming his rightful place among his people.

Glossary sage a plant of the mint family (genus Salvia) with an aromatic taste and smell; Indians burn sage to release purifying properties.


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Chapter 15

The Dog Vision

Summary Soldiers tell Black Elk’s group that they may not stay on their land any longer because they have sold it to the U.S. Government. A steamboat takes them to a Lakota reservation at Fort Yates, where many of Sitting Bull’s and Gall’s people are; although Sitting Bull and Gall are in Canada. The Indians’ guns and horses are taken from them, and they are told that the Great Father (the U.S. President) will pay them for the horses, but that has never happened. Eighteen years old now, Black Elk begins to feel that he should join the rest of his own people, the Oglala, and perform the duty his vision entrusted to him. He and others set out, staying first with the Brules who are encamped on the Rosebud. Black Elk goes alone to sit up on a bluff and sing to the spirits of his vision. He sees the flying men of his vision and feels confirmed in his decision to join the Oglala and do his duty. Black Elk moves on to the agency being built for the Oglala, Pine Ridge, which the Indians call the Seat of Red Cloud or the Place Where Everything Is Disputed. The winter is hard; he longs for spring, when the spirits of his vision will return. He feels the deep despair of his people, and sad that he was not able to do anything for his nation. He could cure individual people, but not the nation. He wonders why he was granted the vision if he could not do anything with it. Spring comes, and Black Elk performs a lamentation ritual with the help of the old medicine man Few Tails. He fasts and purifies himself and, taking the sacred pipe, goes to a sacred place on a hill where Few Tails plants the flowering stick. Alone, following Few Tails’s instructions, he paces out the four quarters of the earth and weeps, thinking of his people’s past and the tragic death of Crazy Horse. He asks the Great Spirit for understanding. Various birds appear to him, as well as a swarm of butterflies that are crying pitifully. The two flying men of his earlier vision, on horseback, show him bloody dogs’ heads impaled on their arrows; the dogs’ heads turn into the heads of Wasichus (white men). Black Elk accepts his duty and sees the daybreak star, the faces

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of people yet to be born, and contented animals living together. Few Tails wakes him, and he goes back to the village where the old men say he has been granted a rare vision that he must perform for the people in 20 days.

Commentary In the Sioux lamentation ritual, the one who laments seeks a vision. Here, Black Elk asks for greater understanding from the spirits who granted him his first vision. He is granted another vision that confirms the earlier message, that he will be empowered to restore his people. This vision features many of the symbols of his first vision: the sacred pipe, the flowering stick, the herb, the four quarters of the earth, and the flying men. In this vision, the whites are clarified as the enemy. The chapter also charts the worsening situation as Indians are forced into various agencies. Their land has been sold to (or taken by) a government that will not enact treaties with them. Their horses are taken and never paid for. The government’s policy is to disarm the Indians and to take away the freedom that their horses allow them. The Indians are gradually being herded into the square little houses that are so alien to them.

Glossary lament/lamentation to feel or express deep sorrow or grief for; the expression of deep sorrow or grief.


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Chapter 16

Heyoka Ceremony Summary Black Elk decides to perform his dog vision with heyokas, who are sacred fools. He explains that truth has a sad side and a rejoicing side and people need different sides at different times. Heyokas do everything backwards and make people laugh, but their actions represent profound truth. To enact the dog vision, two heyokas kill a dog with much ceremony; it is skinned and its head and heart are boiled. While this is happening, 30 heyokas move among the crowd of Indians assembled at Pine Ridge, playing tricks and entertaining. Black Elk and his friend One Side act out the vision by riding past the boiling pot and spearing the head and heart of the dog upon their arrows. His people share the meat, sacred because it has the power of the West in it. The people are made happier.

Commentary Black Elk’s performance of the dog vision again shows the importance to the Sioux of acting out one’s private vision for the community. It emphasizes the esteem in which the person granted such a vision is held. This later vision clearly defines the Wasichus (whites) as the enemy of the people—a significant aspect of the vision. A deep state of hostility now exists between Indians and whites. Many cultures have a version of the sacred fool (the Sioux heyoka), people privileged to convey a truth that no one else is allowed to utter, through wit or entertainment. This ceremony enabled people to see the richness and sacredness of the earth. The ceremony returns the Indians somewhat to their old tribal ways and reminds them that goodness still exists in their world. It directs them to do what Black Elk says the Grandfathers wish, to show kindness to each other as the grasses do.

Glossary Heyoka a person who has been granted sacred power which he enacts in an entertaining and comic way.

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Chapter 17

The First Cure

Summary Digressing from his story to refer to the present (that is, as he is talking to Neihardt), Black Elk expresses distaste for living in square houses that lack the power and sacredness of the circular tepee. He calls his people prisoners of war and fixes his thoughts on the world of the spirit. He notes that boys don’t come into manhood now as early as they used to, which he sees as a further sign of the degeneration of Indian culture. He then returns to his story. Black Elk thinks about the four-rayed blossoming herb he saw in his first great vision and in the dog vision. He and One Side go out to find it and, after singing a sacred song, Black Elk sees it growing in a gulch. He digs it up and brings it home. Cuts-to-Pieces comes and asks him to attend to his little boy, who is seriously ill. Black Elk performs his first healing, using the herb and a cup, a pipe, and an eagle bone whistle, representing the sacred objects of his early vision. Singing, he calls on every power he knows to heal the sick boy. He feels great grief passing through him, and he sees that the boy has recovered. Cuts-toPieces gives him a horse in return for curing his son, although Black Elk says he would have done it for nothing. Black Elk is nineteen; his reputation as a healer begins.

Commentary Black Elk’s explanation of the power (which also means sacredness) of circles is an interesting glimpse into the Sioux imagination, and it echoes some of his earlier descriptions of the symbology of his visions. The greatest circular structure of all is the sacred hoop of the nation, which signifies the integrated and coherent community. The four quarters of the earth, an important symbol of Black Elk’s great vision, recorded in Chapter 3, also inscribe a circle. Black Elk points out here that the orbits of the sun and moon are circular, and so is the cycle of the seasons, which return to their beginning. He explains that the


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circular structure of the tepee resonates with the power of all these other sacred circles, and it is thus especially disorienting, and even profane, for the Indian to live in the square houses built for them at the agencies. Black Elk’s view of his people as prisoners of war is, in fact, probably the most accurate description of the Sioux at this time. The United States has assumed an imperialist stance regarding most Indian tribes, which means that the Indians must be at least controlled and perhaps eliminated because their occupation of the land and their way of life stand in the way of the prosperity of the dominant culture. The two parties are at war: The United States has stopped making treaties and virtually dropped all pretense of accommodating the Indian population. Any Indian resistance to expansionist efforts is interpreted as hostility and insurrection. Any Indian attempt to escape the containment imposed upon him is regarded in the same way as an escape from prison might.

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Chapter 18

The Powers of the Bison and the Elk

Summary Black Elk digresses from his story to explain that it is necessary to perform a vision before its power can be used; he could become a healer only after he had acted out the heyoka ceremony. He also explains that power works through him; if he thought it originated with him, it would be gone. He says that, in talking to Neihardt, he has for the first time told as much of his vision as can be told in words; even his son and his friend Standing Bear have not heard it before. He worries that he may die now because he has described the vision, but he thinks it is best to leave some record of it. After healing Cuts-to-Pieces’ son, Black Elk goes to Fox Belly, a medicine man, to tell him the bison part of his first vision so that he can help his people walk the red road of that vision. Fox Belly helps him perform a bison ceremony, in which Black Elk and One Side are painted red and act like bison. The Indians drink from the sacred cup, which will help them follow the good red road. After performing the bison ceremony, Black Elk feels confirmed as a healer and a man. The next year (1883), he performs an elk ceremony, to represent the mystery of growth. He uses six men dressed as elk and four virgins, who represent fertility, and many of the colors and sacred objects of his first vision.

Commentary Black Elk here comments on his own story, emphasizing the exclusive nature of his conversation with Neihardt. His commentary offers further proof of his modest character; he does not claim extraordinary power for himself, but is content to be an instrument of power. The bison ceremony illustrates once again the sacred nature of the bison for the Indian. Black Elk performs the ritual to direct his people onto the right road, the red road of his vision; they have been following the black road of trouble. In performing the ceremony, therefore, Black Elk assumes to a greater extent the role of guide among his people.


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Chapter 19

Across the Big Water

Summary The bison herds disappeared by this time (fall, 1883). White men killed the bison to sell only the hides or the tongues, or just for sport. Black Elk thinks this is irrational; the Indians killed only what they needed and used every single bit of a bison. Indians settle into the square houses on reservations. The nation’s hoop breaks and people are deeply depressed. Black Elk continues to practice healing, but he is sad at the fact that he cannot restore his nation’s hoop and the flowering tree. In 1886, Black Elk hears that Buffalo Bill wants to hire Indians to use in his Wild West Show. Thinking that perhaps this is a way for him to learn some of the things the Wasichus (whites) know, Black Elk is one of about one hundred Indians who travel by train through Omaha and Chicago to New York and appear in Madison Square Garden throughout the winter. He does not discover any secret Wasichu knowledge; such features of white civilization as prisons and parks dismay Black Elk. In the spring, the show travels to London. The ocean crossing, especially a dangerous storm that comes up, upsets the Indians. Among the people who come to see the show in London is Queen Victoria, whom he calls Grandmother England. She is kind to the Indians, and they later come to her residence for a command performance. Black Elk likes her and says that if she had been their Grandmother (and replaced their Grandfather, the U.S. President), his people would have been treated better.

Commentary This chapter sees Black Elk further displaced and entirely out of his element on a train and then on a ship. Observing Omaha, Chicago, and New York, he realizes that the white men do not have any secret knowledge. He is surprised that the lights of New York outshine the stars. He is dismayed by much of what he sees of white men’s behavior: their greed, for example, and their treatment of the impoverished and those in prison. On ship, when the storm is threatening, the Indians are given life preservers or life jackets, but he says that they did not want

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them; they wanted to dress for death and die in a dignified way so that those in the spirit world would not be ashamed. To dress ceremonially was difficult, he explains, when they were nauseated from seasickness. The incident becomes a metaphor for the difficulty of maintaining Indian ways in a white world. Some of their elk and bison die, and the crew throws them overboard, which upsets Black Elk greatly. He says that he sees his people’s power disappear with the dead animals. Black Elk reports people in the audience shouting “Jubilee!” during their command performance for Queen Victoria; the year is 1887, when Victoria celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of her succession to the throne. Black Elk describes in precise detail the black, grey, and buckskin horses that led the royal carriages. His attention to their color and formation may remind the reader of his first vision, with its herds of horses representing the four quarters of the earth. His interest in the horses reminds the reader of the sacredness of the horse in Indian culture, which Black Elk carries with him even into the alien world of London. Black Elk’s judgment of Queen Victoria—that she would have been a good Grandmother to his people—may seem ironic. Queen Victoria presided over the largest colonial empire in history; in 1876, the year of the Battle of Little Big Horn, she assumed the title of Empress of India. The Wasichus who were trying to subdue Black Elk’s people were once fighting for their own independence against Victoria’s grandfather, King George III of England. In little more than half a century, the United States would succeed Great Britain as the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world, a reputation partly built on the conquest of the Indians.

Glossary jubilee an anniversary, especially a fiftieth or twenty-fifth anniversary; a time for celebration and rejoicing.


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Chapter 20

The Spirit Journey

Summary From London, Black Elk goes to Manchester, England, and gets lost; he does not return to the United States with Buffalo Bill. He goes back to London with some other lost Sioux and works in another western show, Mexican Joe’s, which takes him to Paris, Germany, and Italy. In Paris, he meets a girl with whom he becomes friendly. At the end of two years with Mexican Joe’s show, he is terribly homesick and becomes ill. He goes back to Paris, where the girl’s family helps him recover, and there he has a vision of his home. He seems to be riding on a cloud over the ocean back to his own country; he recognizes the Black Hills, Pine Ridge, and his parents’ tepee. Then the cloud takes him back again over the ocean to Paris, where he awakes and is told he has been all but dead for three days. Buffalo Bill comes back to town and sends Black Elk home, and it is exactly as it appeared in his vision.

Commentary It is an interesting dimension of Black Elk’s character development that he should have had a Parisian girlfriend. (Black Elk was later married twice: first to Katie War Bonnet, the mother of his son Ben, and then, following her death, to Anna Brings White.) His experiences with Buffalo Bill’s and Mexican Joe’s shows make him more widely traveled than most Americans of his time. Despite these adventures, however, he longs for his own country. His homesickness reflects the suffering of all Indians who had been relocated on reservations or were wandering in exile from their own lands. Like Black Elk’s first vision at the age of nine, when he awakes from this vision, he is told that he had been deathly ill for a number of days.

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Chapter 21

The Messiah

Summary Black Elk comes back to see that hunger and disease ravaged his people. The treaty of 1889 left the Indians with even less land, the bison are gone, crops will not grow, the food that the white men promised to send is not forthcoming, and measles and whooping cough are taking lives. Black Elk himself is suffering: His father dies; his younger brother and sister have died while he was gone. He works in a store for the white men. He says that his power was dead while he was gone and he thought it was gone forever, but now that he is back, he continues to work as a healer. Rumors of a man among the Paiutes who would save the Indians and bring back the dead and the bison, circulates among the Indians. The Oglalas send three men to investigate, and they come back with the news that a man named Wovoka, whom the whites call Jack Wilson, is a Wanekia (a great spirit, “One Who Makes Live”). This Wanekia had a vision and says that the Indians might be saved if they perform a “ghost dance.” Black Elk thinks that perhaps this man had the same vision he did and that he was meant to help him. Through the year, rumors grow about the redemption the Wanekia promises. Some believers claim to have seen their dead relatives. Black Elk is puzzled because this is not like his vision at all. The first ghost dance is held. Another is to be held at Wounded Knee Creek and Black Elk goes to see it. He sees a ceremony that is like his vision after all—a circle, with a flowering stick, and the faces of the dancers painted red. He feels sad that he has not been able to enact his own vision, but then becomes happy that perhaps the time has come to do so. He plans to dance with them.

Commentary The premise of the ghost dance religion, or “Messiah craze,” as it was sometimes called, was the belief in an imminent apocalypse—a belief that the end of the world was near and that goodness would be


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restored and evil destroyed. Apocalyptic beliefs often occur among people who are living in duress, as the Sioux were, or among people who fear they might be. (The reader might consider the fright that often attends the turn of a century.) The best defenses of the Sioux seemed ineffective against the overwhelmingly destructive onslaughts of the whites. They are left with making a grand appeal to divine power and hoping against hope that their present world will come to an end, returning them to their original state of happiness and prosperity. The appropriation of tribal lands, the relocation of the population to reservations, the eradication of the bison herd, and the shocking decrease in the Indian population (from an estimated 5 million in the sixteenth century to about 210,000 in 1910) substantiates the Sioux’s fear that life as they know it has come to an end. The Dawes Act of 1887 had established reservations and the allotment of land to individual Indians, but the principle of allotment was ignored in many places and the land opened to homesteaders. When the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the frontier closed in 1890, it was announcing the fact that there was no longer any territory in the United States that was not under the control of whites.

Glossary Messiah a professed or accepted leader of some hope or cause.

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Chapter 22

Visions of the Other World

Summary Black Elk joins Good Thunder and Kicking Bear in the ghost dance. He experiences a feeling of being levitated but has no vision. The next day, during another ghost dance, he has a vision of following a spotted eagle up over the mountains and seeing a paradise where his people are living happily and prosperously. He sees two men in the vision who tell him it is not yet time to see his father and that he must return to his people and bring them something. He knows that it is the way their holy shirts are painted that he must take back. He sees himself coming back to his people, expecting to see the tree blooming in the hoop, but it is dead. He comes to, and tells the others his vision. He spends the next day making the holy shirts. He paints a stick with the sacred paint of the Wanekia. He is asked to lead the next ghost dance, during which he has another vision of following the eagle. This time he sees a man, neither Indian nor white but painted red, leaning against the holy tree, who tells him that all things belong to him, then he disappears. Twelve men, who give him two sticks, and twelve women tell him that his people’s life must be such. He has to cross a dangerous river to go home, and people in it cry for help. He is returned to his body and sings his vision to the others. He thinks the man in his vision might be the man in his previous vision who turned into a bison and then the herb.

Commentary Black Elk became a high priest of the ghost dance religion, sometimes called the “Messiah craze.” The reader sees in this description of the ghost dance much of the symbology that has recurred in Black Elk’s visions during his childhood and, later, in France: a red-painted man, the sacred stick, the number twelve. His feeling of being levitated is reminiscent of his journey through the sky on clouds in his visions. It is evident that Black Elk joins this movement because he believes it is a further manifestation of the vision he was granted much earlier in his life. Some who were massacred at Wounded Knee wore the ghost shirts that Black Elk made.


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Chapter 23

Bad Trouble Coming

Summary The whites try to prevent the ghost dances, which continue in many places. The Indians are still hungry and in despair. Black Elk makes more holy shirts and dresses and distributes them. While dancing with the Brules on Cut Meat Creek, he has a vision of a flaming rainbow that says, “Remember this.” Black Elk feels that he made a mistake in forsaking his great vision for the lesser ones he received while ghost dancing. The Indians move camp twice in reaction to reports that soldiers are marching on them. An agent tells the Indians camping near Pine Ridge that they may dance only three days every month and the rest of the time they must work for a living. A policeman warns Good Thunder and Black Elk that they are going to be arrested. To escape the possibility of an arrest, they move to a Brule encampment on Wounded Knee. Black Elk makes a speech exhorting the Indians to fight if necessary and to depend on the spirits of their departed relatives. More Indians join them. Father Craft, a Catholic priest whom the Indians trust, tries to get them to return to Pine Ridge, and two chiefs arrive to take them back. The Brules resist; there is a struggle. The news comes of Sitting Bull’s death; whites killed him while he was resisting arrest. The highly respected Minneconjou Chief Big Foot arrives, suffering from pneumonia, with 400 people who ran away to the Badlands when Sitting Bull was killed. Starving and freezing, they surrendered to soldiers who brought them to Wounded Knee.

Commentary The tension between whites and the various Lakota bands intensifies in this chapter. The whites try to limit the ghost dancing because they believe it is a prelude to war or, at the least, it keeps the Indians in a highly emotional state that makes it harder to control them. Sitting Bull presides over the ghost dancing at one settlement (Grand River) and wants to go to the Pine Ridge Reservation to join the dancing there. He is arrested by cavalry officers and then shot to death in the scuffle that ensues when his people attempt to protect him.

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Chapter 24

The Butchering at Wounded Knee

Summary On the morning of December 29, 1890, Black Elk sees soldiers riding toward Wounded Knee Creek and, sometime later, hears shots being fired. He puts on his sacred shirt and rides out. About 20 more Indians join him as they ride toward Wounded Knee. There they see cavalry soldiers firing on women and children who are hiding in a gulch. They ride into the fight to try to save their relatives. Black Elk, armed only with his bow, charges a group of soldiers. They hold off the soldiers, but cannot force them into retreat. They see the aftermath of the massacre at Wounded Knee—how men, women, and children were killed trying to escape. Dog Chief tells Black Elk that that morning, soldiers took guns away from Big Foot’s people, but Yellow Bird killed a soldier rather than surrender his gun. The soldiers killed Big Foot and there was pandemonium while the Indians tried to retrieve their guns and defend themselves. There were about 100 Indian warriors and 500 cavalry soldiers. Yellow Bird died in the battle. After the battle, a blizzard came up and covered the bodies.

Commentary The whites were worried that the presence of Big Foot would catalyze an Indian attack. It was the cavalry’s intention to disarm the Indians at Wounded Knee and to ship the more troublesome Indians to Omaha by train. The disarmament proceeded peacefully among the older Indian men, but several young men, including Yellow Bird, refused to hand over their guns and began firing. The cavalry, under Colonel James Forsyth, was well prepared to use whatever force was needed and returned fire, but within five minutes, the Indians broke through cavalry lines. As the battle intensified, and Indian warriors followed women and children seeking shelter in a ravine, the cavalry turned its Hotchkiss guns (precursors of mounted machine guns) on the Indians with deadly effectiveness. Yellow Bird, sniping from a tent, was killed when soldiers set the tent on fire. A total of 153 Indians died in this battle, including Big Foot.


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Chapter 25

The End of the Dream

Summary Black Elk and Red Crow ride back to camp in Pine Ridge, each with a baby he rescued from the battlefield. The camp at Pine Ridge is empty, the Indians having fled. They eat some food that the escaping Indians left, and they are shot at. Black Elk says that he wishes he had died then and there with the meat of the Indians in his mouth. They leave camp and find their people. Black Elk’s mother is overjoyed; she thought he was dead. Black Elk wants revenge for the massacre at Wounded Knee and goes out with a Lakota war party the next day. He remembers his vision and behaves like the geese in that vision, swooping down on the soldiers with his arms outstretched, calling like a goose. He is wounded, but wants to go back to fight anyway. An older Indian named Protector binds his wound and tells him that he must not die, that his people need him. The Lakota nearly defeat the soldiers when a band of African-American soldiers comes to their rescue and forces the Lakota to retreat. In the middle of January, Black Elk gets news of another attack. He rides out, despite the fact that his wound is not completely healed. The Indians attack soldiers at Smoky Earth and take their horses and then retreat into the Badlands. Black Elk wants to form a larger war party and continue the battle, but Red Cloud convinces the Indians to surrender because it is a hard winter and he fears the same hardship and deprivation that followed the Battle of Little Big Horn. The surrender is about more than the battle. The dream is dead, Black Elk says. Not only Indians died at Wounded Knee; a dream for a nation died. He sees himself as a man who could not enact the vision that was granted to him.

Commentary The Battle at Wounded Knee is largely regarded as a massacre, a last-ditch effort to eradicate Indians who were showing signs of reviving. Statistics vary, but U.S. Troops, using rapid-fire guns, killed at least

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150 men, women, and children. White families of the soldiers rescued at least two babies from the massacre at Wounded Knee. It is no coincidence that the battle took place on almost the last day of 1890, the year that the U.S. Census Bureau pronounced the frontier closed—that is, no longer containing any uninhabited area (“uninhabited,” the Census Bureau meant, by white people). Black Elk’s tone throughout this narrative has been elegiac, a lament for a time and a way of life that has gone, and that is his final note here. Many Indians in the present would disagree with this interpretation and say that the Sioux nation never died. The Sioux have gone through many transmutations as a culture, but they have survived. Black Elk’s mournful tone here raises the question as to how much his persona in the book is Neihardt’s invention. Answering that question is beyond the scope of this book, but certainly the reader understands that the last statement Black Elk makes is a lamentation at the passing of his people’s traditional culture.

Critical Commentaries: Author’s Postscript

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Author’s Postscript

Summary Having concluded his story, Black Elk points to Harney Peak in the distance and says that it is the place of his vision and that he would like to go there once more before he dies. He tells his son Ben, who has been acting as interpreter, that if he has any power left at all, there should be some rain or thunder. The party travels to the peak with Black Elk dressed and painted as he was in his vision. It is a cloudless day in the middle of a severe drought. Black Elk sends a prayer to the spirits who appeared to him almost 60 years before, saying that he acknowledges their great power and laments the fact that he has never been able to actualize the vision they granted to him; he has not been able to maintain the sacred hoop of his nation and make the tree flower in its center. He begs the Great Spirit to allow him to help his people. A low sound of thunder is heard and it begins to rain. Black Elk weeps. After a short time, the sky clears again.

Commentary In this chapter, Black Elk steps out of the story he is narrating into the present day reality of his conversation with John Neihardt. This is the only chapter in which Neihardt becomes a participant in the narrative, witnessing Black Elk’s supplication of the spirits of his vision. The entirety of Black Elk’s story up to this point was, of course, only told to Neihardt. In his prayer to the Great Spirit, Black Elk uses the symbology of the vision granted almost 60 years before. He offers a prayer to the four quarters of the earth. He refers to the gifts of the six grandfathers of his vision: the pipe, the cup, the bow, the wind, the herb, the daybreak star, the sacred hoop, and the flowering tree. He expresses his sorrow at not having been able to use the power of his vision to bring his people to prosperity and happiness. The low sound of thunder and the small amount of rain that occur seem to signify diminishment: Both Black Elk’s power as a holy man and the vital relation between the Sioux nation and the Great Spirit are much weaker now than they had

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been. And yet, it does rain, for however short a time, during the worst drought that any of the old Indians can remember. That fact, which Neihardt says may appear only coincidental to Wasichu (white) readers, leaves the reader with a sense of the authenticity of Black Elk’s early vision and the hope that the fragile state of the Sioux nation can eventually be strengthened until it thrives once more.

CHARACTER ANALYSES Black Elk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 Black Elk’s Father

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78

White Cow Sees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Standing Bear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Red Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Crazy Horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Sitting Bull . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Whirlwind Chaser

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80

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As a personal narrative and an autobiography, Black Elk Speaks is not concerned with developing fictional characters. Its plot traces Black Elk’s life through a historical chronology, and its characters are actual figures from the history of the American West. Black Elk is the only person represented in any complete way in the narrative; other characters might be mentioned at most, a handful of times, but readers have no true sense of the details of their lives or personalities.

Black Elk Black Elk is the protagonist of Black Elk Speaks, the only character readers see close up, from the inside out. He is the first-person narrator of the story, and part of what readers know about him is conveyed by the voice he uses in the narrative, which is modest and generous in deflecting the reader’s attention from his personal story to the story of his tribe. Black Elk wins the reader’s faith by using friends to corroborate his narration when his own memory is questionable. He sometimes shows a gentle sense of humor or irony, and he does not sound angry or vengeful as he narrates the story of the extreme difficulties his tribe has endured; on the other hand, he is proud and dignified and does not dismiss the wrong done to him, either. He is a holy man, and his spirituality comes through in the story he tells. Black Elk’s character is developed in two main ways: in the process of claiming his privileged place as a holy man and healer, and as a member of the Oglala Sioux, in the course of the tribe’s increasingly adverse relationship with American whites (whom he calls Wasichus). A vision granted to him at the age of nine empowers Black Elk to lead and minister to his people, and especially to maintain their “sacred hoop”—their cultural identity and coherence as a tribe. This is a mandate that he now says he has failed to enact. Black Elk’s growing anxiety about carrying out the promise of the vision is evident throughout the narrative. In the immediate aftermath of the vision, he repeatedly felt “queer” because he had been so marked for a special destiny; he feels separated from other members of the tribe. Black Elk typically feels somewhat daunted, rather than overly proud, at having been singled out: He is often worried that he may be unworthy of the power given to him; in any case, he specifies that the power is not his own; he is only an instrument of something much greater working through him. Despite some misgivings, he develops a confident-but-modest sense of himself; and in his late teen years, enacts his great vision within a

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public ritual in order to validate his tribal role. He performs individual healings, but the circumstances of Sioux life at the time of American westward expansion prevent him, he laments, from preserving his tribal culture. Respectful of his elders, his parents, the various medicine men who support him in becoming a holy man and healer, and the Sioux chiefs, Black Elk consults with medicine men, listens to his elders’ stories, obeys his father, and makes his mother happy. His characteristic regard for those older than himself reflects the values of his culture, which greatly esteemed the wisdom that comes from age and experience. Indeed, this respect for authority might have contributed to the vulnerability of the Indians, some of whom initially had some trust in “the grandfather at Washington” (the U.S. President). Black Elk is also shown being respectful of Queen Victoria, for whose jubilee celebration he participated in a command performance as part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Black Elk also exhibits the bravery for which the Sioux were known. As a young boy, he participates wholeheartedly in the games that test and challenge his manhood. He hunts with his father, using a bow his grandfather made for him when he was five. He takes his first scalp at the Battle of Little Bighorn, when he was thirteen. Empowered by his vision, he is fearless in battle with the cavalry. Like other members of his tribe, he endures great privation with courage during the transition to reservation life. His greatest hero among the Sioux is Crazy Horse, famed for his bravery. Despite Black Elk’s holiness and healing powers, which mark him as a rare individual, and despite the fact that he is a brave warrior and hunter, he displays a wide range of ordinary human feelings, too. Illness and injury to others saddens him, he rejoices in the growth of new grass in the spring, and he is homesick while in Canada and while touring Europe with the Wild West Show. Black Elk talks about a Parisian girlfriend and her family, but doesn’t mention the women he later married or his children. He enjoys feasting, singing, and dancing. The most traditional activities of the tribe, such as hunting bison and cutting tepee poles, define his best times. In his interaction with whites, usually in the person of U.S. Cavalry Soldiers, Black Elk shows himself to be a man of integrity, honesty, and shrewd judgment. He sees his first white man at Fort Robinson when he is ten years old and thinks only that he looks sick (because of his paleness). Soon, however, he finds himself, with all the Sioux, entrenched in a genuine territorial war with the whites. Throughout

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this process, Black Elk maintains his sense of fairness: The Indian wanted nothing, he says, but to stay on the land he had lived on for centuries; the Indian did not want to make war on the whites just for the sake of making war. The treaty-making history of the Sioux with the U.S. Government clarifies that even after the Sioux had ceded Plains territory, they were robbed of more land in repeated violation of treaty terms. Black Elk’s values, reflective of his tribe’s, are fairness and honesty: He notes that the U.S. Government never compensated the Indians for confiscated horses and guns, despite the government’s promise; the U.S. Government did not pay the Indians for the territory they annexed; and U.S. Soldiers murdered their leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Throughout his narrative, the whites’ greed for gold, for land, and even for bison bemuses Black Elk. However, Black Elk judges people individually rather than on the basis of race, describing his Parisian girlfriend and her family as good and caring people, for example. He reacts similarly to Queen Victoria and Buffalo Bill—even though they are white, too. He contends that the Crow Indians, on the other hand, are horse thieves and never to be trusted. Black Elk’s most distinctive personal characteristic is his spirituality. His acceptance of his visionary experience and participation in the ghost dance, about 20 years later, show that Black Elk believes deeply in a divine power greater than himself. Throughout his daily life, he recognizes a divine presence—in a thunderstorm, in the coming of spring. In his deepest expression of sorrow at the dislocation his tribe has suffered, he is mindful of that spiritual reality: “We are prisoners of war while we are waiting here,” he says of reservation life. “But there is another world.” Black Elk converted to Catholicism in 1904, 14 years after the point at which Black Elk Speaks ends, and worked among the Sioux and other tribes as a catechist; those experiences are not included in his narrative.

Black Elk’s Father Also named Black Elk, he is a medicine man and the cousin of Crazy Horse. He was wounded in the Fetterman Fight (1866) and his behavior throughout the narrative is consistent with traditional Sioux values. He is a provident husband and father who shows great concern for the welfare of his family, supervising their encampments and later, taking them to Canada to try to escape the restrictions of reservation life. He is depicted educating Black Elk in hunting practices and offering him paternal advice. He does not fully understand his son’s visionary experience and pays a medicine man for curing him. He is, at first, skeptical of

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Black Elk’s intuitive understanding of the animal world, although he respects it. Even though he is not a highly developed character, he is especially memorable in two dramatic episodes: first, trying to protect his family and horses right before the Battle of Little Bighorn; and second, hunting and butchering bison during his family’s exile in Canada. He dies shortly after Black Elk returns from his European tour with the Wild West Show (1889), but the circumstances of his death are not recorded.

White Cow Sees Black Elk’s mother, of whom readers see very little, shows maternal concern for her son when he suffers the illness that brings his great vision and weeps with happiness when he returns from his European trip with the Wild West Show. As is typical of Sioux women, she offers support and encouragement to her son in war: She praises him when he takes his first scalp at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and she rejoices when he returns from the massacre at Wounded Knee. Her husband and two of her children die during the course of Black Elk’s story, but her reaction to those deaths is not recorded.

Standing Bear Black Elk’s childhood friend Standing Bear, a Minneconjou Sioux, joins him in his meeting with John Neihardt. He corroborates Black Elk’s sense of himself in the immediate aftermath of his great vision, which he has not heard about in any detail before, and the story of the Battle of Little Bighorn, in which he participated. He was present at the first cure that Black Elk performed. Standing Bear is loyal to Black Elk and brave as a warrior, but not developed fully.

Red Cloud Sioux Chief Red Cloud negotiated the Treaty of Laramie (referred to as “the Treaty of 1868”) with the U.S. Government. He shows great concern for the survival of his people, interceding at Fort Robinson when the soldiers are about to punish a mischievous boy and urging surrender to reservation life when the Sioux are wandering in starvation. Many of the Sioux, including Black Elk, thought of him as being too cooperative with the U.S. Government; Black Elk calls him an “agency Indian” and his band “the Hang-Around-the-Fort people.”

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Crazy Horse Sioux Chief Crazy Horse is a holy man whom Black Elk considers “the greatest chief of all.” Black Elk describes him as a little strange and not very sociable except with young children. As troubles increase between Indians and whites, Crazy Horse became one of the bravest of warriors, routing the cavalry during the Battle of the Rosebud (which Black Elk calls “the Fight with Three Stars”). Unlike Red Cloud, he refused to make concessions to the whites and to advocate the move to reservation life. He would not be part of a conciliatory group of Indians who met with the president in Washington, D.C., and he refused to agree to the U.S. Government’s purchase of the Black Hills territory at any price. Convincing him that all that the white leadership desired was to talk, white soldiers persuaded him to come to Fort Robinson, where he was imprisoned. Soldiers killed him at the fort when he refused to surrender a knife that he was carrying. He was thirty years old. The Sioux deeply mourned his death; Black Elk and his father wept all night when they heard the news.

Sitting Bull Hunkpapa Sioux Chief Sitting Bull was a holy man who journeyed to exile in Canada in a last-ditch effort to resist the movement to reservation life but surrendered when his people were starving. His offering of 100 pieces of his flesh at the sun dance just before the Battle of the Rosebud reveals his bravery and deep spirituality. He was an important proponent of the ghost dance; the U.S. Government regarded his great personal authority among the Sioux as a threat. Two weeks before the Wounded Knee Massacre, the U.S. Cavalry killed him, supposedly for resisting arrest. Black Elk mentions his death only briefly and does not describe the circumstances.

Whirlwind Chaser Whirlwind Chaser, Standing Bear’s uncle, is the medicine man who is paid to cure Black Elk of the illness he suffers at the time of his great vision (see Chapter 3). He acquired a reputation and a horse for bringing Black Elk back to life, which Black Elk views somewhat ironically. He is not a fully developed character, appearing only in Chapter 4, but he is important in recognizing and informing Black Elk’s parents of the fact that Black Elk has had a genuinely sacred experience.

CRITICAL ESSAYS Major Themes

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Major Themes As Black Elk Speaks is not a novel, it may not seem to illustrate themes in the traditional literary sense. As a narrative shaped around the life of an extraordinary person living in extraordinary times, however, it raises significant universal issues and explores central ideas that can be traced throughout the book. The following essays examine some of those thematic ideas as well as a unique textual problem posed by the circumstances of the book’s publication.

The Quest Journey of the Hero The story of someone who undergoes great tests of character to become the embodiment of the values of his or her society is a familiar one. Such stories are the stuff of myths, legends, fairytales, and folktales. The most familiar plot structure for these stories is the journey: The hero sets off on an actual journey, encountering danger and intrigue, adventures that form him or her into the person that he or she is meant to be; the story of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey follows such a plotline. Frequently, the journey is a quest, a search for a significant object that the hero must bring back to the community, as is the case with the Arthurian legends that depict the search for the Holy Grail; sometimes the hero must find and destroy an enemy of the community, as Beowulf does in killing Grendel. In the process of the literal quest, the hero develops those qualities that his or her society most values, becoming a model for the society by the time he or she returns home. In a psychoanalytical view of literature, these stories are interpreted as reflective of a psychological or spiritual process, as symbolic of any person’s psychological and/or spiritual quest for the mature integration of personality and the full development of character. Black Elk Speaks is such a story. The Sioux lifestyle of moving camp from place to place forms the journey as a plot structure. The troubled period of tribal history depicted in the story, with the Sioux migrating into exile in Canada and being forced to move out of their own territory and onto reservations, further dramatizes the journey plot. In addition, Black Elk himself travels to Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. But the most important journey the narrative represents is Black Elk’s process of fulfilling the destiny promised to him in his vision, a process that ends somewhat tragically, according to the narrative, rather than heroically.

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Because of the vision he was granted at the age of nine, it is clear that Black Elk is a child with a privileged destiny. The terms of his great vision give him the mandate of maintaining the sacred hoop of his people—an imaginable structure of cultural coherence and unity. The Sioux are known as warriors, but Black Elk will be something different, a holy man and a healer, equally valued in his community. Black Elk comes from a family of medicine men, and he will need the recognition of other healers and holy men in the tribe in order to fulfill his destiny. First of all, the fact that his culture has a place for such a person is important: his task will be to equip himself to take on a public role that is already defined. One of the first steps in this process is receiving the recognition of others. This happens almost immediately on the evening following his great vision, when the medicine man Whirlwind Chaser tells Black Elk’s father that his son is sitting “in a sacred manner” and that he could see “a power like a light all through his body” (see Chapter 4). When Black Elk is about 18 and old enough to assume his role, the medicine man Bear Sings helps him perform the horse dance, an enactment of his vision (see Chapter 14); later, another medicine man, Few Tails, helps him conduct the lamentation ceremony in which he receives his dog vision (see Chapter 15) and another older man, Wachpanne, helps him enact the heyoka ceremony (see Chapter 16), after which he performs his first cure (see Chapter 17). Even as a child, Black Elk exhibits special powers. Shortly after his great vision, when he is hunting with his father, he can sense where the deer are. He feels a special kinship with the animals that figured in his vision, especially the eagle; whenever he hears the whistle of an eagle, he is imaginatively transported to the world of his vision. But Black Elk also exhibits another aspect of the developing hero, the child of destiny, and that is a self-consciousness to the point of feeling disconcertingly different from those around him. He repeatedly describes himself as feeling “queer” during these early years and knowing that others think he has become strange; his friend Standing Bear confirms his judgment. He also develops a great deal of anxiety about fulfilling the mandate of his vision, an anxiety that grows into what he calls “the compelling fear.” The Sioux are living in troubled times: The U.S. Government’s attempts to annex Indian territory and contain the Indians on reservations was a persecution that amounted to cultural genocide as the Sioux were starved into submission, their weapons and horses confiscated. The tribal culture that would otherwise have supported Black Elk in his role as holy man has become fragmented and does not offer him a clear way to maintain the sacred hoop of his nation.

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Like other heroes, Black Elk undergoes trials that test the quality of his character. Surviving the illness, during which he experienced his great vision, is his first such trial. In other trials, he participates in the suffering of his entire tribe: the Battle of the Rosebud (“the fight with Three Stars”), the Battle of Little Bighorn, at which he took his first scalp, the exile in Canada, the move to reservation life, and the massacre at Wounded Knee. The lamentation ceremony during which Black Elk has his dog vision is a kind of crucible for him, a moment at which he undertakes the trials of all his people and, with fasting and the use of sacred ritual objects, begs for a vision that will show him how to fulfill his destiny (see Chapter 15). That vision does come, and the mandate is clarified: The white man is the enemy of the Sioux. In traditional quest stories, the hero brings something back to the community. What Black Elk wants to bring back to his community is a restored sense of tribal identity, but the westward expansion of white Americans makes that impossible. In contrast to other such stories, Black Elk’s story ends with his feeling that he was unworthy of his vision. He recognizes that as a healer he helped individual people, but mourns the fact that he could do nothing for his nation. Black Elk, then, appears to be a displaced hero, born to fulfill a role his culture could no longer support, and pitted against forces his community had no power to fight. The Author’s Postscript contradicts Black Elk’s conclusions, however, as the Great Spirit responds to Black Elk’s invocation, and it rains.

Cultural Displacement Black Elk Speaks depicts the tragedy of a culture that can no longer support its traditional ideals. In their own terms, the Sioux have lost the sacred hoop of their nation. But they did not lose it through a lack of faith or other internal weakness; they lost it, almost inevitably, to the forces of economic greed when white Americans expanded westward in search of more land and more goods. Their culture is lost through the loss of the traditions and lifestyle that Black Elk commemorates. The end of the traditional Sioux hunting practices is a striking example of the loss of culture. The bison, an abundant source of food that was a daily reminder of the providence of the Great Spirit, were considered sacred. The bison roamed the prairie in what seemed to be a never-ending supply. Even the Transcontinental Railroad’s separation of the herd into two halves, when Black Elk was still a child, did not seem especially threatening; as he says, half of the herd was still more than they

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could use. A complex cultural event, the great bison hunt, occurring just after his vision (see Chapter 4), is an arena for the hunters on horseback to display their courage and bravery (Standing Bear, killing his first adult buffalo, shows his manhood). Butchering, food preparation, and the hideand-bone-processing practices that followed the hunt allowed for the tribe’s sustenance. Finally, the community celebrated with dancing, singing, and thanksgiving rituals—a joyous feast. The priority of railroad and settlement expansion and the carelessness with which whites hunted the bison for sport (“They just killed and killed because they liked to do that,” Black Elk says) meant that the herd decreased drastically in size. After January 1876, when Indians were ordered onto reservations, the food supply became a way to control defiant Indian behavior. With the bison herd much diminished and the confiscation of Indian horses and guns, the Indians had no way to supply their own food and were forced to rely on government rations. When the Indians seemed hostile, as when Sitting Bull refused to come out of Canada and live on a reservation, rations were decreased. The Indians, starved and sickened, were coerced into submission. When the bison herd was lost, so was contact with the sacred along with a sense of Sioux identity and independence. Loss of their nomadic way of life was another incident in the cultural displacement of the Sioux. When the Plains Indians were herded onto agency-governed reservations, they lost their interdependence with nature. No longer could they move voluntarily to pursue the bison herd, harvest plants and rootcrops, or fish. The traditional encamped way of Sioux life, with its close sense of community and its clear social structure, was replaced with the foreign immobility of reservation life, further undermining the Sioux sense of identity. In connection with the loss of traditional practices, Black Elk calls attention to the loss of cultural symbols, most importantly the circle, which is central to Sioux belief because “the Power of the World always works in circles”: The world is round, the moon is round, and the seasons return to repeat themselves cyclically. In reflection of this, tepees were built around circular frames, and the structure of the community was understood as a circular image, the sacred hoop. “Our tepees were round like the nests of birds,” Black Elk says, “and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.” He recalls cutting poles for tepees as a child as emblematic of an older, happier time. When the Indians had to abandon their traditional tepees for the square wooden houses of the reservation, he says, they lost their power: “When we were living in the power of the circle in the way we should, boys were men

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at twelve or thirteen years of age. But now it takes them very much longer to mature.” Black Elk calls the houses “square boxes” and characterizes the Indians as “prisoners of war.” The Indians retain some important practices amidst this cultural displacement. Black Elk retains his sacred pipe, and even when he speaks to Neihardt, Black Elk uses the ritual of pipe smoking as a way to affirm their relationship. (Elsewhere, Neihardt mentions that he himself shared the cigarettes he brought with him at his first meeting with Black Elk; one imagines that the significance of this gesture was not lost on Black Elk.) Some Indian scholars maintain that Sioux culture was never lost, that it only went underground or transformed itself under new appearances. Photographs, for example, of Black Elk, in his later years, show him addressing the Great Spirit while wearing long red underwear instead of the red paint that he wore as a young man. Similar photographs show Indians handling ritual objects, such as small drums made of evaporated milk cans instead of wood and buffalo hide. These can be seen as a triumphant sign of the survival of a culture, but Black Elk’s tone in the narrative is one of lament for a culture lost.

Relationship with Nature Nature is the dominant environment for the Sioux. They calculate time according to events in nature: Months are named “the Moon of Popping Cherries,” for example, or “the Moon when the Ponies Get Fat.” Black Elk defines the state of goodness as that time when “the twoleggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives”; now, he says, the whites “have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these little islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu [white]; and it is dirty with lies and greed.” He thus sees himself and his tribe as creatures of nature and harmony with nature as the ideal state—a state that is in opposition to white civilization. The traditional Sioux way of life created interdependence between man and nature. Respect for the cycle of the seasons and animal life was necessary in order to secure food, clothing, and shelter. When the Indians lived in cooperation with nature, those necessities were available to them—available in such abundance, in fact, that their very existence seemed proof of the care of the Great Spirit. When the westward expansion of the whites destroyed that interdependence, it violated the Sioux’s perception of the sacred as well as their way of life.

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Respect for animals is a major feature of Sioux culture throughout Black Elk Speaks. The bison herd, for example, is central to the Sioux way of life; its existence is incorporated into ritualized hunting practices and feasting, and bison are killed with economy: Nothing is wasted, Black Elk says, in contrast to their arbitrary slaughter for sport by whites. The horses, which were so important to the Sioux for warring and hunting, are cared for and guarded carefully. They become sacred animals in Black Elk’s vision, which he later enacts as the “horse dance.” Black Elk’s vision sensitizes him to animals; he can hardly bear to hunt after having the vision, and he feels a special kinship with the eagle after being given the power name Eagle Wing Stretches. In a small-but-touching episode, during the Canadian exile of the Oglala, Black Elk and the men he is with hear porcupines crying in the cold and do not harm them as they seek the warmth of their shelter. Not only animals reflect the Sioux’s relationship with nature. Voices of thunder and flying men in Black Elk’s vision take him through the sky to a tepee made of clouds with a rainbow for a door. Ever after, for him, the sound of thunder will evoke the world of that vision, and he will look forward to rain as a visit from the spirit world. Black Elk describes spring several times as that time when “the grass shows its tender faces,” so that it, too, is personified and a relative of human beings. The rain falling softly at the end of Black Elk Speaks is a validation of Black Elk’s belief.

Neihardt’s Authorship John Neihardt, who is responsible for Black Elk’s narrative in the form of Black Elk Speaks, can be seen in both positive and negative ways. His conversation with Black Elk, his transcription and editing of their talk, preserved Black Elk’s story, which has enlightened generations of readers. It seems clear that Black Elk Speaks inspired other people, outside the Sioux tribe. Joseph Epes Brown, author of The Sacred Pipe (1953), for example, recorded and edited Black Elk’s explanation of Sioux spiritual traditions. But Neihardt gained Black Elk’s confidence in a rare way. There seems to have been a meeting of the minds between the two men that did not exist between Black Elk and anyone else. In the course of the narrative, readers learn that Black Elk has not told even his closest friends some of what he will tell Neihardt. So, Black Elk Speaks is a testament to the apparent good faith between the two men and evidence of Neihardt’s embrace of Sioux culture and spirituality, of his respect for another man and another culture.

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But any text that has been through the process that Black Elk Speaks has raises questions of authenticity. The man who lived it recited the narrative after 40 to 60 years had passed since the events he narrates. Black Elk’s son Ben translated his father’s spoken Oglala dialect into spoken English. Then, Neihardt’s daughter Enid, who often functioned as her father’s secretary, recorded Ben’s spoken English in shorthand. A man who was not an anthropologist or a linguist but a poet, Neihardt himself edited her written transcription into its final form. The narrative is historically accurate in terms of the chronology and events in tribal history that it records. The transcript seems to indicate that the accuracy is due to Black Elk’s memory; the collaboration of his friends Standing Bear and Iron Hawk is also important, as is the fact that Neihardt researched some of this same material for his Song of the Indian Wars completed in 1925. In any case, Neihardt’s Cycle of the West, the epic poem about the settlement of the American West that was his life’s work, indicates that he was certainly the most sympathetic of listeners. He had great respect for the Omahas he met in Nebraska, and the job he would later undertake at the Office of Indian Affairs is another indication of his high regard for the Indian community. His own lifestyle indicated a contempt for material things and a reverence for the artistic and spiritual. All these factors make it difficult to separate Black Elk’s voice from his own. But the greatest point upon which authenticity can be argued is the elegiac tone of the narrative. Black Elk is depicted as a man who failed— or, certainly, thinks he failed—as a leader of his people. He laments that his vision had not been granted to someone worthier; his conclusion is that the task he had been given, that of maintaining the sacred hoop of his nation, has not been accomplished and that the Sioux are essentially a lost culture. It is this perception that some scholars in the Indian community have argued with. They do not see Black Elk’s culture as having disappeared, but as having been transformed into something more consistent with the circumstances of reservation life. They would argue that Neihardt had his own disappointments (public neglect of his poetry, for example) and felt himself culturally marginalized. As someone with an essentially romantic temperament, Neihardt may have found the nostalgic picture of a bygone day more gratifying than the less glorified remnants of Sioux culture in the present day. Because we do not know whether Black Elk or Neihardt determined the point at which the book would end, it can be argued that Neihardt chose to end it with the massacre at Wounded Knee in order to reinforce a romanticized view of Sioux tribal life. It may be that the life Black Elk went

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on to lead afterward (which included working in a store and doing some farming, as well as marrying twice, raising children, and converting to Catholicism) was of no interest to Neihardt because it was not consistent with his own imagined view of Indian life. Chapter 3’s description of the great vision poses additional textual problems. To what extent does the iconography of the vision owe something to Neihardt’s own religious experiences and even to Black Elk’s later knowledge of Christianity (he converted to Catholicism in 1904 and worked as a lay catechist). These questions cannot be answered satisfactorily, but to examine them is to try to get closer to the very important and fascinating topic of how the story of a human life is shaped and interpreted through the lens of the imagination.

CliffsNotes Review Use this CliffsNotes Review to test your understanding of the original text, and reinforce what you’ve learned in this book. After you work through the review and essay questions, identify the quote section, and the fun and useful practice projects, you’ll be well on your way to understanding a comprehensive and meaningful interpretation of Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks.

Q&A 1. Black Elk thought the best chief of the Sioux was: a. Red Cloud b. Crazy Horse c. Sitting Bull d. Iron Hawk 2. The animals most essential to the traditional Sioux lifestyle were the: a. elk and horse b. bison and elk c. porcupine and elk d. horse and bison 3. The six grandfathers of Black Elk’s vision instructed him to: a. preserve the sacred hoop of his nation b. offer 100 pieces of flesh at the sun dance c. take his people into exile in Canada d. lead his people in the Battle of Little Bighorn 4. Most of the troubles of the Sioux, as depicted in this book, were caused by: a. pollution of their lakes and streams b. warfare with the Crows c. white Americans’ greed for land d. contagious diseases spread by whites

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5. The U.S. Government’s response to the Sioux ghost dance religion was: a. compulsory public education b. conversion to Roman Catholicism c. the massacre at Wounded Knee d. the Transcontinental Railroad Answers: (1) b. (2) d. (3) a. (4) c. (5) c.

Identify the Quotation 1. Up on the Madison Fork the Wasichus had found much of the yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy. . . . They told us that they wanted to use only a little land, as much as a wagon would take between the wheels; but our people knew better. And when you look about you now, you can see what it was they wanted. 2. Once we were happy in our country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us. But the Wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed. 3. They have given you the sacred stick and your nation’s hoop, and the yellow day; and in the center of the hoop you shall set the stick and make it grow into a shielding tree, and bloom. 4. I am sixty-seven years old. All over the world I have seen all kinds of people; but to-day I have seen the best-looking people I know. If you belonged to me, I would not let them take you around in a show like this. 5. You see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead. Answers: (1) Black Elk describes the greed for land that is the reason for the westward expansion of the United States, which has resulted in the Sioux’s loss of territory. (2) Black Elk describes the reservation life that is an attempt to contain the Sioux. (3) The grandfather of Black Elk’s vision gives him the mandate to preserve the identity of his tribe. (4) Queen Victoria

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confirms Black Elk’s sense that he and his people are being treated badly by the American government. (5) Black Elk’s statement of his sense of personal failure.

Essay Questions 1. Explain the problems posed by Neihardt’s transcription and editing of Black Elk’s narrative. 2. Discuss Black Elk’s spirituality as it compares to a religion you are familiar with. 3. Explore the relationship between adults and children in the Sioux society depicted in Black Elk Speaks. 4. Discuss the relationship between men and women in the Sioux society depicted in Black Elk Speaks. 5. Trace the history of the U.S. Government’s dealings with the Sioux as depicted in Black Elk Speaks.

Practice Projects 1. Draw or paint Black Elk’s great vision as it is described in Chapter 3. 2. Examine the accounts of the settlement of the American West given in high school or college history textbooks. Compare them to Black Elk’s story. 3. Examine newspapers from the 1880s and 1890s to see how the U.S. Government’s war against the Sioux was described. Compare them to Black Elk’s account. 4. Watch videotaped movies that depict the settlement of the American West. Compare their stereotypes of Indians and whites to Black Elk and the Indians that he describes. 5. Create a Web site for the Sioux Nation and/or Black Elk. 6. Create a collage that reflects Black Elk’s experiences as recorded in Black Elk Speaks. 7. Draw a map of North America that shows Indian tribal boundaries.

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8. Draw a map of the United States that shows the pattern of westward migration and the annexing of Indian territory. 9. Research any of the following topics: a. The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad b. The hunting practices of the Sioux Indians c. The healing practices of the Sioux Indians d. The westward migration of settlers onto the Plains e. London and Paris, 1887–88: What would Black Elk have seen there as a member of the Wild West Show? f. The ghost dance religion g. The life of General George Armstrong Custer h. The life of Sitting Bull i. The life of Crazy Horse j. The life of Buffalo Bill Cody

CliffsNotes Resource Center The learning doesn’t need to stop here. CliffsNotes Resource Center shows you the best of the best links to the best information in print and online about the author and/or related works. And don’t think that this is all we’ve prepared for you; we’ve put all kinds of pertinent information at www.cliffsnotes.com. Look for all the terrific resources at your favorite bookstore or local library and on the Internet. When you’re online, make your first stop www.cliffsnotes.com where you’ll find more incredibly useful information about Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks.

Books This CliffsNotes book, published by Hungry Minds, Inc., provides a meaningful interpretation of Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks. If you are looking for information about the author and/or related works, check out these other publications: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown examines much of the historical period covered by Black Elk Speaks from the Indian’s point of view, including a higly graphic account of the Wounded Knee Massacre. This book was widely read when it was first published and helped significantly to raise American awareness of Indian issues. Holt, 1971. The Black Elk Reader edited by Clyde Holler is an excellent, up-to-date compilation of critical and historical analyses of Black Elk’s narrative. Syracuse University Press, 2000. Custer’s Fall: The Native American Side of the Story by David Humphreys Miller is a detailed but highly readable treatment of the Battle of Little Bighorn that chronicles the movements of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry and the Indian bands almost minute-by-minute. It is sympathetic to the Indian but also relates the motivations and political strategy of the whites. Maps and line drawings by the author. 1957; rpt. Penguin, 1992. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 by James Mooney is an official and detailed ethnographic study of the ghost dance religion described in Chapters 21 and 22 of Black Elk Speaks. Contains many photographs of the period. 1896; rpt. University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

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A Cycle of the West by John G. Neihardt is Neihardt’s life work, his epic poem about the settlement of the American West and the displacement of the Indian tribes. For most readers, it is of more historic than artistic interest, but it illuminates some of the conjectures about Neihardt’s imaginative investment in Black Elk Speaks. Macmillan, 1949. (Reprinted as The Mountain Men and The Twilight of the Sioux, University of Nebraska Press, 1971.) North American Indians of Achievement series (including Sitting Bull: Chief of the Sioux, Crazy Horse: Sioux War Chief, and Red Cloud: Sioux War Chief ), edited by Liz Sonneborn, is an excellent introduction to the historical context in which Black Elk lived. These are brief biographies of individual Indians and the times they lived in, especially in relationship to the western expansion of the United States. Many photographs and drawings. Chelsea House Publishers, 1992. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, edited by Joseph Epes Brown, is similar to Black Elk Speaks in that it is a narrative told to Brown by Black Elk. It extends the exploration of Black Elk’s life as a Sioux holy man to a more specific discussion of Sioux ritual relating to the sacred pipe, which is treated in Chapter 1 of Black Elk Speaks. University of Oklahoma Press, 1953. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt, edited by Raymond J. DeMallie, analyzes Neihardt’s influence on Black Elk’s narrative and reproduces transcripts of his meeting with Black Elk. Indispensable to any discussion of Neihardt’s authorship of Black Elk Speaks. University of Nebraska Press, 1984. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation by Robert M. Utley is a scholarly examination of the period in Sioux history covered by Black Elk Speaks, including the massacre at Wounded Knee and the ghost dance movement. Yale University Press, 1963. It’s easy to find books published by Hungry Minds, Inc. You’ll find them in your favorite bookstores (on the Internet and at a store near you). We also have three Web sites that you can use to read about all the books we publish:

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Internet Check out these Web resources for more information about Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks: Neihardt Home Page, www.system.missouri.edu/whmc/neihardt. intro.htm—site maintained by the University of Missouri at Columbia, which houses the collection of Neihardt’s papers, manuscripts, and related mateials. Provides links to detailed information about separate works by Neihardt as well as his biography; the Black Elk Speaks link contains photographs from Enid Neihardt’s personal scrapbook taken at the time she and her father visited Black Elk. Also provides a link to a scholarly listing of the contents of the Neihardt archive at the university, including audio- and videotaped material. Museum of the American Indian Home Page, www.nmai.si.edu—site maintained by the Smithsonian Institution featuring links to exhibits at the Museum of the American Indian in New York City and to collections of artifacts and written materials available for research. Eiteljorg Museum Home Page, www.Eiteljorg.org— the site of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, which features links to special exhibits providing good visual information on Indian artifacts and lifestyle. A wide variety of Web sites pertaining to Sioux culture and historical figures like Black Elk is available online by searching the words, Lakota Nation.

Videos “A Conversation with Vine Deloria, Jr.,” Words and Place: Native Literature from the American Southwest, Denny Carr, Director. Available with transcripts, including teaching guides and suggested background reading, from Norman Ross, 1995 Broadway, New York NY 10023.

Recordings Flaming Rainbow: Reflections and Recollections of an Epic Poet. United Artists Records, UA-LA-157-L3, 1973. John G. Neihardt Reads from His Cycle of the West and Selected Poems. Caedmon Records, CDLS 1665, 1981.

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Magazines and Journals “Poetry and History in Neihardt’s Cycle of the West” by Lucile Aly in Western American Literature 16.1 (1981) 3-18. A scholarly analysis of Neihardt’s epic poem on the settlement of the American West. “Black Elk Speaks with Forked Tongue” by G. Thomas Couser in Studies in Autobiography (1988). An examination of the textual issues surrounding Neihardt’s authorship. “Vision and Experience in Black Elk Speaks” by Robert F. Sayre in College English 32, 5 (February 1971), 509-35. One of the first detailed examinations of Black Elk Speaks in terms of the traditional issues of literary criticism.

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Index

A allotment of land, 67 American history, conventional version of, 9 animals bison, 30, 84–85, 87 horses, 30, 37, 64, 87 respect for, 87 apocalyptic beliefs, 66–67 apocalyptic visions, 29 authenticity, question of, 9–10, 24–25, 88–89 autobiography, narrated authenticity of, 22, 24–25, 88–89 as genre, 7, 10, 18

B Battle at Wounded Knee, 69, 70, 71–72 Battle of Little Big Horn, 46–48 Battle of the Hundred Slain, 21 Battle of the Rosebud, 13, 43–44, 80 Bear Sings, 13 Ben (son of Black Elk), 7, 9, 18, 65 Big Foot, 15, 69, 70 bison, 30, 84–85, 87 bison ceremony, 62 bison hunt, 32, 33–34, 52, 85 black, symbolism of, 19, 29 Black Elk. See also visions of Black Elk alienation, feelings of, 32, 33, 83 character of, 19, 24, 62, 76–78 conversion of, 9–10, 30, 78 early life of, 21 fairness, sense of, 77–78 as medicine man, 56 modesty of, 62, 76 Parisian girlfriend of, 65 personal authority of, 25 return from Europe, 66

role of, 11 special powers of, 83 spirituality of, 78 visit with, 7 at Wounded Knee, 69, 70 wounding of, 71 Black Elk (father), 78–79 Black Elk Reader, The (Holler), 95 Black Elk Speaks as autobiography, 10 as ethnography, 8–9 as personal narrative, 7–8, 10, 18 as political story, 9 problems with, 9–10 publication of, 3 as quest literature, 8 reviews of, 10 as sacred text, 9 as spiritual autobiography, 8 as testimonial, 10–11 as tribal history, 10 “Black Elk Speaks with Forked Tongue” (Couser), 98 Black Hawk: An Autobiography, 7, 18 Black Hills territory, 13, 39, 40, 41, 49 Black Road, 15, 54, 55 Black Wasichu, 47 Brave Wolf, 14, 52, 53 bravery, value of, 34, 53, 77 Brings White, Anna, 65 Brown, Joseph Epes, 87 Buffalo Bill, 13, 63 Bundle of Myrrh, A (Neihardt), 2 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Brown), 10, 95

C Calamity Jane, 41 Canada, dislocation to, 52 Canary, Martha Jane, 41 characters in narrative overview of, 12–15 use of, 12 circle shape, symbolism of, 29–30, 60–61, 85–86 civilization of Indians by whites, 41

100


CliffsNotes Web site, 95 Cody, William Frederick (Buffalo Bill), 13, 63 Collected Poems (Neihardt), 4 communal nature of Indian experience narrative and, 18, 24–25 performance of visions, 56, 59 sharing food, 34 “Conversation with Vine Deloria, Jr., A” (video), 97 counting coup, 40 courting practices, 37–38 Craft, Father, 69 Crazy Horse Black Elk and, 7 character of, 13, 39, 42, 80 death of, 11, 40, 51 massacre in village of, 41 Spotted Tail and, 49–50 white men and, 35 Creighton University, 4 Crook, General (Three Stars), 13, 45, 49 Crow Nose, 14 Crow tribe, 37, 40, 78 cultural differences between Indians and whites, 22–23 cultural displacement, 84–86 Custer, George Armstrong (Long Hair), 13, 39, 41, 47–48 Custer’s Fall: The Native American Side of the Story (Miller), 95 Custer’s Last Stand. See Battle of Little Big Horn Cuts-to-Pieces, 15, 60 Cycle of the West, A (Neihardt), 3, 4, 7, 88, 96

D Dawes Act of 1887, 67 Dawn-Builder, The (Neihardt), 3 Deloria, Vine, 10 destiny, belief in, 24 Dick Cavett Show, The, 5 Divine Enchantment, The (Neihardt), 2

Dodge, Colonel, 39 dreams, belief in power of, 24 Dull Knife, 14

E eagle feather, 19 Eagle Wing Stretches, 35 eagles, 30 Eiteljorg Museum home page, 97 elders, respect for, 77 elegiac tone, 18, 72, 88–89 elk ceremony, 62 ethnography, 8–9, 44

F fairness, sense of, 77–78 Few Tails, 13, 57 Fire Thunder, 14, 21 Flaming Rainbow (recording), 97 flowering stick or tree symbol, 4, 30, 66, 68 footnotes, 19 foreshadowing, 30 Forsyth, James, 70 Fort Robinson, 35, 50, 51 four, symbolism of, 29, 30 Fox Belly, 15, 62 French, Captain, 46 frontier, closing of, 67, 72 Frost, Robert, 3

G Gall, 14 ghost dance, 66, 68, 69 ghost dance religion, 12, 66–67 Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, The (Mooney), 95 ghost shirts, 68, 69 Golden Age, myth of, 23 Good Thunder, 15, 68, 69 Grant, Ulysses, 40 Great Spirit, 19, 20 greed of white man, 41, 42, 78, 86

CliffsNotes Index

101

H

K

Hairy Chin, 14, 46 Hard-to-Hit, 14, 52, 53 Harney Peak, 73 healing, first experience at, 60 healing ceremony, 46, 48 herb, four-rayed blossoming, 60 hero of quest literature, 8, 82–84 heyoka, 13 heyoka ceremony, 59 High Horse, 14, 37 holy man, 24, 83 homesickness, 65 horses, 30, 37, 64, 87 Hump, 40

Kicking Bear, 15, 68 kill dance, 40

I

M

iconography, 29, 89 Indian agencies. See reservations Indian experience acknowledgment of intuitive or extrasensory, 33 communal nature of, 18, 24–25, 34, 56, 59 cultural displacement and, 84–86 holy man and medicine man, 24, 83 ideal of perfect society, 22, 23 maintaining in white world, 63–64 nature and, 24, 86–87 nomadic way of life, 82, 85 space, concept of, 22–23 storytelling tradition, 18–19, 38 time, calculation of, 23 inset story, 37 Iron Hawk, 14, 43–44, 47

Mackenzie, Colonel, 14, 49 Madison Square Garden, 63 Man Called Horse, A (movie), 10 Man-Song (Neihardt), 2 Manchester, England, 65 manhood, demonstration of, 33, 60, 77 Mark Twain Quarterly, 4 marriage practices, 37–38 Martinsen, Mona, 2, 5 maturity of Black Elk, 19 medicine man, 24, 83 “Messiah craze.” See ghost dance religion metaphor, 63–64 Mexican Joe’s show, 65 Miles, General, 49 Minneapolis Journal, 4 Monroe, Harriet, 3 mourning ritual, 53 Museum of the American Indian home page, 97 myth of Golden Age, 23

J John G. Neihardt Reads from His Cycle of the West and Selected Poems (recording), 97 journey plot, 82–84 Jung, Carl, 10, 30

L lamentation ritual, 58, 84 Last Days of the Sioux Nation, The (Utley), 96 leaving piece of flesh, 44 Life’s Lure (Neihardt), 3 Little Big Man (movie), 10 London, England, 63 Lonesome Trail, The (Neihardt), 3 Long Hair (Custer), 13, 39, 41, 47–48

N narrated autobiography authenticity of, 22, 24–25, 88–89 as genre, 7, 10, 18

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nature, relationship with, 24, 86–87 Nebraska Normal School, 2 Neihardt, Enid, 3, 7, 9 Neihardt, Hilda, 5 Neihardt, John G. career of, 4 death of, 5 early life of, 2 marriage of, 2 as participant in narrative, 19, 73 poetry of, 3, 4 relationship with Black Elk, 87 visits to Pine Ridge Reservation, 7 works of, 2–4 Neihardt, Sigurd, 3, 7 Neihardt home page, 97 New York Times, 3 nomadic way of life, 82, 85 North American Indians of Achievement (Sonneborn), 96

O Odyssey, The (Homer), 8, 82 Office of Indian Affairs, 4, 88 Ogalala Sioux Crazy Horse and, 51 cultural displacement and, 84–86 description of, 25 dislocation of, 52 history of, 8–9, 10–11, 19, 54–55 as prisoners of war, 60, 61 stereotypes of, 53 Old Hollow Horn, 15 One Side, 15 oral tradition, 19 Outing magazine, 3

P paranormal phenomena, experimentation with, 4 passage of time, problem of, 9–10 personal narrative, 7, 10, 18 Pine Ridge Reservation, 3, 4, 7, 57 pipe, sacred, smoking, 18, 19–20, 86 Plenty Eagle Feathers, 12

“Poetry and History in Neihardt’s Cycle of the West” (Aly), 98 pony drag, 29–30 population, 16, 50 Pound, Ezra, 3 prereservation experiences, 36

Q Quest, The (Neihardt), 3 quest literature, 8, 82–84

R Rattling Hawk, 14, 46 red, symbolism of, 19, 29 Red Cloud as “agency chief,” 41–42 Battle of the Hundred Slain, 21 character of, 13, 51, 79 people of, 40 treaty of 1868 and, 35, 39 Red Crow, 71 Red Deer, 14, 37 Refuse-to-Go, 12 Reno, Marcus, 46, 47, 48 reservations Dawes Act of 1887 and, 67 establishment of, 41 Pine Ridge, 3, 4, 7, 57 prereservation experiences, 36 as prison, 60, 61 transition to, 55 River and I, The (Neihardt), 3 Running Elk, 15

S sacred fool, 59 sacred hoop, 83, 84, 85 Sacred Pipe, The (Brown), 87, 96 Sioux, groups of, 25. See also Ogalala Sioux Sioux belief circle shape and, 29–30, 60–61, 85–86 Great Spirit, 19, 20

CliffsNotes Index

Sitting Bull character of, 13, 39, 80 death of, 69 Gall and, 14 at sun dance, 44 wives of, 37 Sixth Grandfather, The (DeMallie), 96 Smith, Jedediah, 3 Song of Hugh Glass, The (Neihardt), 3 Song of Jed Smith, The (Neihardt), 3 Song of the Indian Wars, The (Neihardt), 4, 7, 88 Song of the Messiah, The (Neihardt), 3, 4, 7 Song of Three Friends, The (Neihardt), 3 space, concept of, 22–23 spiritual autobiography, 8 Splendid Wayfaring, The (Neihardt), 3 Spotted Tail, 49–50, 51 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4 Standing Bear Battle of Little Big Horn, 46–47 Battle of the Rosebud, 44 on Black Elk, 32 Black Elk and, 7 character of, 12, 79 manhood demonstration of, 33 storytelling tradition, 18–19, 38 Stranger at the Gate, The (Neihardt), 2 sun dance, 43, 44–45 surrender, 71 symbols black road, 50 circle shape, 29–30, 60–61, 85–86 eagle feather, 19 flowering stick or tree, 4, 30, 66, 68 four ribbons on pipe, 19 ghost dance, 68 for healing, 60 sacred hoop, 83, 84, 85 smoking pipe, 18, 19–20, 86 sun dance, 45 in visions, 29–30, 58, 73, 89 synopsis of narrative, 10–12

103

T Terry, General, 47 testimonial, 10–11 themes authenticity, problems with, 9–10, 22, 24–25, 88–89 communal nature of Indian experience, 18, 24–25, 34, 56, 59 cultural and philosophical differences, 22–23 cultural displacement, 84–86 ideal society, 22, 23 nature, relationship with, 24, 86–87 quest journey, 82–84 Three Stars (General Crook), 13, 45, 49 time, calculation of, 23 timeline, 16 tone of narrative, 18, 72, 88–89 Transcontinental Railroad, 22, 23, 26, 41 transcription problems, 9–10 treaties of 1851, 41 of 1868, 35, 39 of 1889, 13, 66 Treaty of Laramie, 79 tremolo sound, 33 tribal boundaries, 22–23 tribal history, 10 twelve, symbolism of, 29 Two Mothers (Neihardt), 3

U University of Missouri, 4, 9, 97 University of Nebraska, 4 U.S. Civil War, 22

V Victoria, Queen, 12, 13, 63, 64, 92 “Vision and Experience in Black Elk Speaks” (Sayre), 98

104


visions, inducing, 28–29 visions of Black Elk accuracy of memory of, 30 as apocalyptic, 29, 66–67 conflicted feelings about, 35 dog vision, 57–58 early life, 21, 24 empowerment and, 54, 55 failure to enact, 76–77 ghost dance and, 68 great vision, 26–28 iconography of, 29, 89 as manifested through him, 19, 62 as not induced, 29 overview of, 11 performance of, 56, 59, 62, 83 quest theme and, 82–84 return to place of, 73 surrender and, 71 thunder beings and, 54, 87

W Wachpanne, 13 Wanekia, 66 War Bonnet, Katie, 65 Wasichu, 23

Watanye, 14, 35 Web sites CliffsNotes, 95 Eiteljorg Museum home page, 97 Museum of the American Indian, 97 Neihardt home page, 97 When the Tree Flowered (Neihardt), 4 Whirlwind Chaser, 12, 80 white, symbolism of, 19, 29 White Cow Sees, 12, 79 whites cultural differences between Indians and, 22–23 greed of, 41, 42, 78, 86 secret knowledge of, 63 Wild West Show, 11–12, 63 Wilson, Jack, 15, 66 Wind God’s Wooing, The (Neihardt), 2 Wounded Knee Creek camp, 69, 70, 71–72 Wovoka, 15, 66

Y yellow, symbolism of, 19, 29 Yellow Bird, 15, 70

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