American Memory in Black Elk Speaks

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Black Elk Speaks is now generally understood to be John Neihardt's highly idiosyncratic representation of his interviews with Black Elk. While this is certainly the case, Black Elk's worldviews nonetheless can be recognized if we carefully track the patterns of misrecognition that pervade Neihardt's book. For it can be shown that as Neihardt works to channel Black Elk, Black Elk is channeling Neihardt. When that reciprocal process is critically exposed, the dark historical import of Black Elk Speaks shifts from a Native American to a non-Native American frame of reference. The "dream" that "died" in the mud of Wounded Knee is not the Great Vision of Black Elk.