Black Elk Speaks: A Native American View of Nineteenth-Century American History

Abstract

Henry David Thoreau wrote of American in his Journal a few years before Black Elk's birth that frequently happens that historian, though he professes more humanity than trapper, mountain man, or gold-digger, who shoots one (Indian) as a wild beast, really exhibits and practices a similar inhumanity to him, wielding a pen instead of a rifle (Thoreau 438). Black Elk, holy man of Ogallala Sioux (Lakota), experienced inhumanity Thoreau refers to first hand on Great Plains and eastward for his entire life span from 1860s to 1950s. It is fortunate that one white man, John G. Neihardt wielded pen in Native American's favor, to tell Black Elk's story of Lakota people way it was told to him at Manderson, South Dakota in 1931. Black Elk sensed Neihardt would come and, when poet showed up, he implicitly trusted him. Though Neihardt romanticized somewhat words of Black Elk, essential spirit of Black Elk's story of a people remains faithful and fairly accurate according to scholars like Robert F. Sayre and Raymond DeMaille, who have examined original transcriptions made at Manderson.Though such details as soldier weed (an antidote to white soldier's fire power) and Black Elk's sense of fulfillment rather than despair are not found in published version of Black Elk Speaks (1932), I will rely on this text as my source for Native American's wielding of pen (through Neihardt) to set record straight. Too many American historians of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (including Francis Parkman) assumed a priori that western expansion of United States into Indian Territory was sanctified by an abiding manifest destiny. Even if, thought non-Indians, people, instead of being militant, were quaint and charming, they had to make way for of an civilization. Black Elk questions white man's progress and advanced civilization by giving us through Neihardt true story of his people, their plight and their near demise at hands of white man, though he is hopeful that fourth ascent on good red road will come sometime in near future. The good red road, of course, refers to road of health, strength and wholeness as opposed to black road of war and despair.At outset of Black Elk's story of his people, which he recollects at age 68 when Neihardt visits him, we are given a harmonious world view of Plains Indians before it was almost irreparably damaged by white man: is story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with four-leggeds and wings of air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit (Neihardt 1). But this world of sharing, where even strong and able hunters must give to weak and sick, will be disrupted by Wasichus (they who are many) who from Black Elk's viewpoint abandon their disadvantaged people.To begin with, Black Elk's father limps from a wound received at Fetterman Fight on Peno Creek near Fort Phil Kearney in 1866 when Black Elk was three years old. As a boy Black Elk was told that the Wasichus were coming and that they were going to take our country and rub us all out and that we should all have to die (Neihardt 8). What was reason for Wasichus wanting to take Lakotas' country? Black Elk explains:When I was older, I learned what fighting was about that winter (1866-67) and next summer. Up on Madison Fork Wasichus had found much of yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy, and they wanted to have a rod up through our country to place where yellow metal was (The Black Hills); but my people did not want road. It would scare bison and make them go away, and it would let other Wasichus come in like a river. They told us that they wanted only to use a little land, as much as a wagon would take between wheels; but our people knew better. …