Who Was Black Elk?
Black Elk was an Oglala Lakota holy man whose account of his visions and his people’s history, recorded by the poet John G. Neihardt and published as Black Elk Speaks in 1932, became one of the most significant documents of Native American spiritual experience in the twentieth century. Born in 1863 near the Little Powder River, he witnessed the Battle of Little Bighorn at thirteen, traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and survived the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, which he described as the death of a people’s dream.
What makes Black Elk’s story more complex than its reception often acknowledges is the second half of his life. In 1904 he converted to Catholicism and became a catechist for the Jesuit mission on the Pine Ridge Reservation, a role he maintained for the rest of his life. He was known among his people as Nicholas Black Elk, and he evangelized with genuine conviction. This aspect of his biography is often suppressed in favor of the vision narratives of Black Elk Speaks, but it is essential to understanding who he was.
His case raises, with unusual sharpness, the question of how the gospel relates to indigenous religious traditions — whether conversion represents cultural destruction or genuine encounter with the God who is the maker of all peoples.
In Their Own Words
“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers.”
— Black Elk Speaks“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children.”
— Black Elk Speaks“It is a good day to die.”
— Lakota saying, attributedSelected Bibliography
- Black Elk Speaks — 1932 — as told to John G. Neihardt
- The Sacred Pipe — 1953 — as told to Joseph Epes Brown
- The Sixth Grandfather — 1984 — original transcripts, ed. Raymond DeMallie
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