In 1775, the Oglala Lakota migrated west to Montana, Wyoming, and the Black Hills in South Dakota, to escape encroaching white settlers and the enemy Chippewa. Over the course of the next century, Native Americans died in large numbers from European diseases such as influenza, smallpox, tuberculosis, and cholera. Just as the Indian wars were beginning in the 1860s, Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) was born by the Little Powder River in Wyoming; he had five sisters and one brother, and belonged to the Oglala Lakota tribe of Sioux. His band of the Teton Lakota lived a nomadic lifestyle, following the seasonal foods and buffalo herds for subsistence. Black Elk’s father and grandfather also were medicine men named Black Elk; in fact, Black Elk was the fourth generation to bear this name. He was second cousin to Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
This picture of the Oglala Sioux holy man Black Elk (1863–1950) dates from the 1880s. Black Elk experienced his Great Vision at the age of nine, and was a highly influential medicine man throughout his long life. His reminiscences to John Neihardt at the age of 67 formed the basis of the classic text Black Elk Speaks. (Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)
It was on the Pine Ridge reservation in the Black Hills at Harney Peak, the highest point in South Dakota at 7,242 feet of elevation, where Black Elk experienced his Great Vision. These sacred Black Hills are made of uplifted limestone, a unique geological feature that formed caves. The Black Hills are rich in minerals including granite, muscovite, quartz, gold, and silver. The Black Hills are the site of Mount Rushmore, the huge carved stone busts of four former presidents, a tourist attraction still hosted by Black Elk’s descendants.
In 1874, when Black Elk was just a boy, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s expedition discovered gold in the Black Hills. As a result, the United States government tried to purchase the land from the Lakota, but they refused to sell their sacred Black Hills. In 1876, the cavalry was dispatched to force the Lakota back to the Pine Ridge reservation. The resulting conflict was known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which featured the legendary Custer’s Last Stand. Black Elk was thirteen years old at the time and witnessed this battle, taking his first soldier’s scalp. After the battle, Crazy Horse and the band fled to Canada for three years to resist life on the reservation.
At the age of five, the young Black Elk experienced his first vision and heard the voices of spirits. At the age of nine, he experienced the Great Vision for which he would become famous. During his Great Vision, he was sick with swelling and fever for twelve days, which historians have concluded was a case of tuberculosis. In this vision, he was guided by ghostly horses to a council of six old wise men. He was shown the future through an elaborate mystical journey of images. The sages gave him sacred objects to help his people: a sacred bow and arrows that had the power to destroy, a peace pipe that cured sickness, a flowering cane to walk in the hoop with his people, and sacred herbs for healing. He was also taught about the Red Road going north to south and the Black Road going west to east, a crossroads symbolizing war and trouble.
With this sacred knowledge, Black Elk was given the power to destroy the Lakota’s enemies. He was assigned the spotted eagle as his caretaker and named Eagle Wing Stretches by the council of wise men. Each of the six wise men took turns telling him about his new powers and how he would lead his people through hard times. He was given visions of the future of his people being ill, but becoming healed: “But when I looked behind me, all the women and the children and the men were getting up and coming forth [healed] with happy faces,” he said. Upon regaining consciousness after his vision, he found himself lying in a teepee with his parents and the medicine man, Whirlwind Chaser, watching him. Black Elk could still feel a warm glow within him from the Grandfathers in his vision.
When he was seventeen, his parents noticed that the boy had not really recovered since his sickness at age nine. Black Elk said he felt haunted and anxious about not knowing how to fulfill his vision. His parents asked Black Road, the shaman, to see him. When Black Elk confessed his vision, Black Road said he needed to do what the Grandfathers in his vision were asking. Black Elk enlisted the help of the wise man Bear Sings to listen to the Great Vision and prepare the new Horse Dance.
Together these shamans helped Black Elk bring the vision to reality in every detail possible. They erected a teepee and decorated it with the four directions, gathering representations of the sacred objects, and fulfilling every detail of the vision. The Horse Dance was performed for the first time in front of all his people. After the reenactment of the vision, all the people and the ponies felt healed and happy. After that day, Black Elk’s life changed; he no longer felt haunted by voices. Every morning he woke in time to watch the morning star rise, a key part of his vision. Many of the people in his band would rise with him to watch the morning star.
By the age of nineteen, Black Elk’s wisdom and power had grown. He performed the Horse Dance in front of his people and other tribal members that had fled to Canada. The elders approved the new ritual and he was deemed a true medicine man in front of the tribe. He became a highly respected medicine man among his people. During healing rituals, Black Elk said he could see the patient’s face in the cup of water. The following year, the remaining members of his band settled onto the Pine Ridge Reservation.
In 1886, in an effort to learn more about the white man, Black Elk joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The show performed in Chicago and New York, and then went overseas to Europe, performing in France, Italy, Germany, and England, where the show performed for Queen Victoria. Black Elk felt that his powers had left him while in Europe, but he believed that they came back upon his return to the reservation. When he returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1889, he found that almost his entire family and tribe were afflicted with disease and malnourishment from government-allotted rations. At the same time, the U.S. government had banned the Lakota religion, traditional dances, and rituals.
In 1890, Black Elk enacted the first Ghost Dance for his people. By this time, the Lakota were ready for an uprising. Black Elk’s return and Ghost Dance turned into a movement to return to traditional ways under his guidance. Black Elk painted his vision of the Ghost Dance onto shirts. The Lakota wore these “war shirts” at the Battle of Wounded Knee, believing that they made them bulletproof. Black Elk himself was wearing a war shirt while carrying his sacred bow and arrows; he said he could feel the bullets bouncing off him while he rode through the middle of the battlefield. It was only when he stopped that he felt fear, lost his power, and felt the first bullet penetrate his body at the hip.
In 1892, Black Elk married Katie War Bonnet; they had three children, though only one of their children, Ben, survived to adulthood. Katie War Bonnet died in 1903. The next year, Black Elk studied the Catholic catechism, was baptized, and was given the name Nicholas. Soon thereafter, Black Elk married Anna Brings White, having three more children, of which only his daughter Lucy survived. Anna Brings White died in 1941.
Starting in 1936, Black Elk spent most of the following ten summers performing at the “Sioux Indian Pageant.” Although the U.S. government had banned traditional dances, rituals, and religious ceremonies, Black Elk was free to perform these actions in front of curious white tourists that visited the Black Hills. During this period, Black Elk felt apprehensive about carrying out all the duties expected of him as a holy man. The Grandfathers in his vision had given him great power to destroy the enemy, but Black Elk was hesitant to harm even the soldiers that had decimated his family and people. He was suffering from tuberculosis, which made him reluctant to take on more leadership responsibilities. He also had lost part of his eyesight in a gunpowder accident.
Alexie, Sherman (1966–)
Raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington, writer Sherman Alexie is perhaps best known for The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which formed the basis of his most successful screenplay, Smoke Signals. His The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is very popular among young readers. Alexie’s work touches upon Native American folklore, but one of his greatest contributions to the study of American mythology is interrogating accepted legends and perspectives concerning interactions between Anglos and Native peoples. His novel Flight, for example, although ostensibly for young adult readers and born of post-9/11 angst, reexamines seminal historical events in the conflict between Indians and whites from the time of the Battle of the Little Bighorn through the infiltration of radical Indian activists by the FBI a century later and beyond. Alexie forces Americans—of whatever ancestry—to reassess core beliefs about who we are.
C. Fee
At sixty-seven years of age, Black Elk chose to tell his Great Vision to John Neihardt, saying, “It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those shadows men get lost.” Black Elk believed that telling the story of his vision would dissipate its power. He had never learned to speak or write English, so he had his son Ben translate his Great Vision into English for Neihardt and then counter-translate back to Lakota to ensure that it was correct. Black Elk took the opportunity to relay the entire Great Vision to his only son. The resulting book helped make Black Elk into the legendary medicine man who can still be read about today. Neihardt first published the book Black Elk Speaks in 1952. Before he died, Black Elk also invited Joseph Epes Brown to record his stories of the Oyate and the sacred religious stories of his people. The resulting book, The Gift of the Sacred Pipe: Based on Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Olgala Sioux, was published in 1953, three years after Black Elk’s death.
Black Elk became one of the best-known Native American medicine men in history. He lived his elder years on a parcel of Lakota sacred ground in the Black Hills. In 1948, he had a slight stroke, confining him to a wheelchair. At this time he was also having trouble with a broken hip, tuberculosis, and failing eyesight, which required him to live with his children Ben and Lucy. Black Elk died on August 17, 1950. He said that after he died there would be a “great display of some sort in the sky.” At his wake, several people saw northern lights and falling stars. Black Elk was laid to rest at St. Agnes Mission Chapel in South Dakota, near Manderson.
René Fox Small
See also Culture Heroes of the Native Americans; Custer, George Armstrong; Hickok, James Butler “Wild Bill”; Myths; Shamans; Vision Quest
Further Reading
Holler, Clyde. 2000. The Black Elk Reader. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Neihardt, John, and Nicholas Black Elk. 2000. Black Elk Speaks. New York: University of Nebraska Press.
Steltenkamp, Michael F. 1993. Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.