june 2006
Black Elk 1863-1950
A Tribal Member of the Oglala Sioux Nation
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Black Elk family......Back row (left to right): Henry, Ben, Nicholas Jr. Middle row (left to right) Olivia, Ellen, Bertha. Front row: Nicholas Jr's daughters Virginia and Theresa.
Granddaughters.....Olivia and Esther, Black Elk's two surviving granddaughters. They have shared their memories about Black Elk in a new book called "Black Elk Lives."
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Hehaka Sapa
Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
"Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.”
Black Elk was a visionary, a prophet and dreamer, a holy man and healer; a warrior. Born near the eastern end of the border between Wyoming and Montana in 1863 Black Elk was a member of the Oglala band of Lakota Nation. This remarkable man was witness to some of the most famous events in the late nineteenth century wars for white control of Indian Territory.
Black Elk bridged the gap from a time of living a traditional Lakota lifestyle to the time when his people, including his second cousin Crazy Horse and the great chief Sitting Bull, were desperate to resist the tide of soldiers, gold seekers, and settlers moving into their region, especially the Black Hills area. At the age of twelve Black Elk took his first scalp at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1776. In 1886, as his tribe was forced onto reservations, Black Elk joined the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and toured the U.S. and Europe, even performing for Queen Victoria.
Fearing for his people, he returned from Europe to the Pine Ridge Reservation only to be wounded one day after the Massacre at Wounded Knee in December of 1890.
Black Elk’s legacy, however, is not that of warrior or world traveler. Rather, his contribution to his people and the world come from his story “Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux.” His life story, as told through poet John G. Neihardt, and published in 1932 became one of the most important books ever written about Indian spirituality.
For Black Elk, his spiritual journey began at the age of nine with a life-changing vision. After lying unconscious for twelve days, he awoke to recall his “Great Vision.” This vision gave Black Elk insight into the future. He also was shown a dance ceremony, and was granted special powers by the Six Grandfathers, the spirits of the four directions and the earth and sky. However, the vision and its message so disturbed and frightened the young man he would not tell anyone for seven years. Black Elk carefully guarded the secrets within him.
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Black Elk continued to have visions, and his people recognized that he had unusual powers of understanding. When he was eighteen, a medicine man interpreted his mystical experiences. He told Black Elk that he must perform the dance ceremony that he envisioned. Black Elk carried out these instructions and his unusual abilities seemed to increase. Black Elk later said his visions were meant to protect the Sioux way of life despite the contact with white people, which as history confirms, proved to have disastrous consequences for his people.
Black Elk married his first wife Katie War Bonnett in 1892. She became a Catholic, and all three of their children were baptized as Catholic. After her death in 1903.
Black Elk also became baptized, taking the name Nicholas Black Elk, and continued to serve as spiritual leader among his people. It is said Black Elk used both the pipe and the rosary in his prayer, and saw a connection between the old ceremonies and Christianity.
He remarried in 1905 to Anna Brings White, a widow with two daughters. Together they raised three more children, and Anna remained his wife until she died in 1941.
Millions of people of all colors have read “Black Elk Speaks.” It has been called a great religious classic with its mystic and cosmic connections to all of humankind.
Esteemed author Vine Deloria, Jr. in his introduction to “Black Elk Speaks,” comments on the importance of the book to Native Americans:
“The most important aspect of the book, is not its effect on the non-Indian populace who wished to learn something of the beliefs of the Plains Indians but upon the contemporary generation of young Indians who have been aggressively searching for roots of their own in the structure of universal reality. To them the book has become a North American bible of all tribes. They look to it for spiritual guidance, for sociological identity, for political insight, and the affirmation of the continuing substance of Indian tribal life”
Black Elk has a large, thriving family still living on his property on the Pine Ridge Reservation located in Southwestern South Dakota. Black Elk’s extensive family lives on his property in Manderson, South Dakota, and in Porcupine, South Dakota. Olivia and Esther, Black Elk’s two surviving granddaughters remember their famous Grandfather very well; when Black Elk died in 1950 these two granddaughters were in their 20’s. They have recently shared their memories about Black Elk in a book called “Black Elk Lives.” For more information read “Black Elk and Flaming Rainbow,” by Hilda Neihardt, and “Conversations With the Black Elk Family,” by Esther Elk Desersa and Hilda Heihardt.
“Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, (Harney Peak in the Black Hills) and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy……..But anywhere is the center of the world.” >From “Black Elk Speaks.”
“A long time ago my father told me what his father had told him, that there was once a Lakota holy man, called “Drinks Water” who dreamed what was to be…He dreamed that the four-leggeds were going back to the Earth, and that a strange race would weave a web all around the Lakotas. He said, “You shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land…Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.” Black Elk (1932)
Sources: "Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux," by John G. Neihardt, 1932. "Extraordinary American Indians," by Susan Avery and Linda Skinner. Copyright 1992 Childrens's Press, Inc.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia-Black Elk
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