Black Elk Speaks
Black Elk lived through a tumultuous time in the history of America, a time that saw the decline and fall of his people and their way of life. He was a teenager at the Battle of Little Bighorn, the last stand of the Sioux where General George Armstrong Custer and his troops were massacred. Though they won the battle, the Sioux, and all Native Americans, lost the war, and they were sent to reservations where their posterity remains to this day. Though some have entered the casino business, the conditions are for the most part less than satisfactory.
A Broken Man
In the 1880s, Black Elk was a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, which toured the Eastern United States and Europe. After a few years of celebrity, he returned to his people only to witness the horrible and notorious massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. A broken man after this event, he converted to Roman Catholicism out of resignation rather than a valid conversion experience. For thirty years, he served his people as best he could on the Pine Ridge Reservation, teaching a faith that was not his and putting aside the visions and insight he had experienced in his youth. He dressed like a white man and gave up his shamanic religious practices for Catholicism. But Black Elk's native spirituality could not stay dormant forever. As Jung spoke of the shadow, such things will surface when the right impetus is there to spur them.
Black Elk's vision was of a scared hoop of all the peoples of the world living together in peace. He was exhorted by the Great Spirit to go forth among the people and spread this message, but he kept it to himself for many decades. The ancient saying that “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear” goes both ways, and in 1930, Black Elk met a student to help him fulfill his divine mandate.
A Spirit Revitalized
American poet John G. Neihardt interviewed Black Elk as a historical source for an epic poem he was writing on Wounded Knee. Black Elk saw something in Neihardt and believed that he had been brought there for a reason. It became a mutually beneficial relationship and a lifelong friendship. The poet met a great man and produced a profoundly spiritual work; Black Elk put on his native dress and returned to the “center of the world” where he had received his first vision, Harney Peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Witnesses recall that during Black Elk's prayer, clouds formed, thunder rumbled, and a drizzle fell upon those present. When the prayer ended, the skies cleared. It was a prayer of forgiveness and atonement for not remaining true to his beliefs, but Black Elk more than made up for his hiatus of despair as he did the work of the Great Spirit by spreading the word to all who would listen.
