Black Elk Speaks
This month we are looking at the Indians side of the history of the Wild West, making this weeks book Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt. So let’s do this.
Now, I knew nothing about this book when I picked it up. I assumed it was something like a memoir or biography. And that’s what I got out of it. But, reading through the introductory sections, the forewords, the prefaces, I came to understand that for a lot of people who read this book, it’s a spiritual sign post. They take the medicine man part quite seriously.
And he WAS a medicine man, don’t get me wrong, I’m not disrespecting Black Elk or the knowledge and wisdom he offered the world. But I did not get spiritual manual from this. So what did I get from this?
Well, Nicholas...I’m assuming this is the Christian name he adopted when he converted to Catholicism, more on that later, Nicholas Black Elk was born in 1863, The Moon of the Popping Trees, known to us white folk as December. Specific date unknown because...well...the tribes didn’t count days the way white people do.
His earliest memories are from when he was about three years old, as he remembers his father returning from The Battle of the Hundred Slain in December 1866. To white people, this was known as The Fetterman Fight. This caused his father to walk with a limp until his death, sometime in 1890.
And Black Elk goes on to describe a happy childhood among the Sioux, and what it meant to be Sioux and grow up as Sioux. Until he was 9 years old, when he became very sick. Now, it is never specified what the illness was, just that he swelled up, maybe some kind of edema? He was unconscious for more than a week, during which, he had an enormous vision.
And this vision appears to be the basis of everyone turning this from a memoir to a spiritual manual. I’m not saying it wasn’t powerful: It absolutely was. But it would unquestionably have more meaning for the Sioux, then for the academics who have been fawning over this story like it’s a new bible for the 20tt century, ushering in a new age of peace and understanding, if only we could all stop killing each other.
He had another vision at I believe 12, and ultimately would act out his vision, with the help of other Sioux medicine men and members of his tribe. He would participate in the battle of Little Big Horn, aka Custer’s Last Stand. Black Elk provides detail of many engagements, and heartbreaking details of the collapse of the Sioux Nation in the face of westward expansion of America.
He did do a stint as a traveling Indian with Buffalo Bills Wild West show, spending several months in New York before crossing the ocean and performing in England for Queen Victoria, who he got to meet, and the two were mutually impressed with each other.
Then at some point in England, Black Elk and several other members of the show, missed the boat for their next tour point. Realizing they would need money, they signed on with ANOTHER traveling west show and went to the continent, before returning to England
While in England, Black Elk befriended an English family and was at dinner with them when he had another vision, which resulted in the English family thinking he had died. Spoiler alert: he had not. When he came out of the vision, it was to the fortunate news that Buffalo Bill’s show had returned to the Area, and Buffalo Bill, not being a complete asshole, gave Black Elk a ticket home, where Black Elk became quite a renowned medicine man among his people.
And then in 1889/1890, he heard about Wovoka and the Ghost Dance. And he was a little skeptical at first. But eventually, he came to believe. He does describe the Ghost Dance and at it’s heart, it’s a trance dance, which is not at all unusual for tribal cultures to engage in. Even non-tribal cultures, if you consider the Sufi mystics, whirling dervishes, and zar dances of the middle east, none of which are tribal, but all involve dance which allows you to connect with the spirit realms. Black Elk would participate in the dance at Wounded Knee. And yeah...hearing the other side of that tragedy in the words of a survivor is every bit as horrifying as any other incident of democide.
I think this book highlights the underlying frustration of how lopsided American laws were and are. Freedom of Religion SHOULD have protected the Ghost Dancers. But it would not do so until 1924, when the tribes were granted citizenship, and well after most had converted to Christianity.
Now, the narrative of Black Elk Speaks ends at Wounded Knee. But the TEN Appendices at the end of the book, while being not a little repetitive, provide more general background. By 1901, so about ten years post Wounded Knee, he had fully converted to Catholicism, and was a missionary on the reservation, teaching catechism to tribal members.
Why is this relevant? Well….when he’s talking about his great vision, and then dancing it out with his people...little inconsistencies that I would not expect to find in a shamanic, non-Christian culture. Like the use of twelve dancers, one for each month, and the mention of 30 peoples, one for each day of the month. Except...well, tribal cultures, historically are well aware that there are THIRTEEN moons in a calendar year. And only 28 days in a lunar cycle. The breakdown into 12 and 30 is the result of the Julian calendar, not shamanic tribal cultures.
And it was only through reading those repetitive appendices that I could see how some people would get spiritual manual from this book, and not memoir of a man who had lived through some fairly horrifying historic events.
I am not saying this is NOT a spiritual book. It just is not for me. For me, it was a powerful memoir of a man who lived through the sorrow of the loss of all he held dear. It was worth the read. But based on the 10 Appendices….9 really, the last one was a list of Sioux terms… the only reason this reached the level of spiritual manual is because of the campus intellectuals who adopted it as such have been writing papers about it since it’s original publication in 1932.
