Black Elk Speaks: The Complete Edition

Great book!
Bad rip off....Recently I went to my local library for this book. I have a paper due in two weeks on the book, so I was a bit pressed to get this home.The library has the "premiere edition" but it had someone's underlining throughout,bothered by this-- I went to the store and bought my own version.I thought this one is worth having until....I noticed a few oddities. First the book is a bit wider, the pages are crispy white, not the tinged off white the library book had. The maps, and pictures are all black and white on the same paper as the rest of the book--whereas, the library version has a clear difference in the paper, the library had the glossy pages and the pictures are in color. The ISBN numbers are identical on the back. Is there supposed to be a difference? I am HIGHLY bummed that my new book isn't the same as the one our library has--minus the underlining. I wish I had known I wouldn't be getting the same version before it was purchased. I asked "sunypress" about this, they claim to only have the glossy edition with the off white pages, so is the one I got a forgery? I am disappointed and it will be sent back asap.

I loved this prescient bio; it is an allegory for our times.The Indians had property but not necessarily rights to it. For example, "Black Elk speaks" about stealing other Indian tribe's horses matter of fact way and of a tribe member kidnapping a young squaw. This was said in a matter of fact way. "Taken" would have been a better word. The American government took the land kept much of it for itself. The feds forced Indians on reservations and doesn't acknowledge the personal property rights of the individual Indians on the reservations. The federal government along with its handmaiden phony Non governmental organizations of environmental groups obtain more western land every year by threat of force, by using tax payer monies, or by defacto ownership through regulations. Now in the 21st century the new American Natives (that would be you) are experiencing a new mass movement invasion of federal government & state government & leftist promoted illegal immigrants and "legal" anti-private property rights Islamists. Americans are being put on reservations (islands of semi private property in a sea of federally controlled land) and the gov. is deciding what if any property rights you might have If Americans truly had private property rights this could not happen. Unless we regain an appreciation and take back our property rights your grand kids lives will be as empty and government dependent as Indian lives on reservations today.

What makes this edition of Black Elk Speaks valuable is the marginal notes by Raymond L. DeMallie, who edited the typescripts of the original interviews from which John G. Neihardt created this book. These notes make clear just how much Neihardt used Black Elk's words to promote his own point of view. In the Kindle edition, these notes are hyperlinked to the text, which would have been a great idea if it had been done well. But the text of these notes in the Kindle edition is often incoherent, as though someone had read them aloud into a voice-recognition program that scrambled letters and mashed words together or separated them in strange ways. Sometimes numbers are translated as letters or other symbols. I had to compare a copy of the print edition with the Kindle text at several points before I could make sense of it. That defeated the whole purpose of having a digital copy. Also, getting back to the text from the notes was often a problem. the store should exercise quality control with its electronic books.

After nearly 300 reviews on here, I don't have much to add. I'd just stress a few points:

* This 2014 edition is extra interesting for the motivated reader because it contains all the extras: copious footnotes logging places where Neihardt added text not in his interview transcriptions; inclusion of all (?) the introduction chapters from various additions over the years; detailed bibliography; etc.

* If you take the time to read the various scholarly introductions you realize the historic account here is filtered through many lenses. First you have the imperfections of Black Elks' own experiences and memories of events 40-60 years back; then his words were translated into English imperfectly (and with bias) by the translator at the time; then Neihardt's daughter transcribed the translator's words in short hand imperfectly (and with bias); then Neihardt took these short hand notes and highly edited. In fact, we now know, Neihardt added entire sections that do not seem to be in these notes. And he made judgments calls, etc. What we get is a wonderful story, rooted in the Black Elk interviews, but clearly not a precise rendition of Black Elk's experiences. This game of telephone, plus the heavy literary overlay by Neihardt can be disillusioning. Or we can enjoy this as a masterpiece occupying some murky place between genuine folk lore and fiction. This edition is bravely honest and clear on this topic.

* The publisher did a superb job of compiling all the appendices, packaging it, cover art, etc. But at points the text suffers from weak proof reading. There are major typographical errors in the endnotes, for example. Whole clauses omitted, probably by computer error. See p. 300 notes 1 and 5 and p. 301 notes 8 and 10 (all of which are incoherent).

* The reader will find no firm resolution here to the question of Black Elk's actual 1930s beliefs. Clearly he had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1904 (in his 40s) and continued in that faith for over 45 years. One short "extra canonical" alleged quote is cited, and re-cited repeatedly, to minimize the sincerity of his Catholicism -- "my children have to live in this world." This falls flat for me. It does not explain why he not only converted (when many other fellow tribesmen did not), but became a sort of Roman Catholic "preacher" and catechist. And it doesn't explain how he remained so active in the Catholic faith long after his children (and grandchildren) had grown.

I think his steadfastness in Christian belief and practice are not plausibly in question. So then, what do we make of his beautiful, passionate descriptions of traditional Native American religion here? The literary overlay of Neihardt may account for some of this. (Did Black Elk employ words for God suggesting monotheism-- a big Creator God -- or more pantheistic ones?) And is Black Elk largely describing what he experienced and once embraced, rather than advocating for this worldview? Or, as some suggest, did he come to some syncretic beliefs -- seeing his Indian religious practices as sort of congruent with his later Christianity, perhaps sort of proto-Christian? We don't know, but those are questions addressed, I'm sure, in some other biographies of Black Elk I hope to explore. Here see editor's notes on p. 252.

* Of all the Introductions reproduced here, the fullest is Professor Phillip J. Deloria's 2014 one. This gives a wonderful overview for reading the other earlier intros. On p. xxx, for example, he lovingly contextualizes his own father, Vine Deloria Jr's, introduction from the 1979 edition. The elder Deloria had written a stirring intro., but his son points out that his references to the "Black Elk theological tradition," this book as the "Bible of all tribes," and even the sole monumental theological classic in American history == these are examples of the elder Deloria's tendency toward big provocative overstatements.

Anyway, I truly loved this book, cover to cover.

John Neihardt must have been led by God to visit Black Elk, and ultimately, to record his story. Black Elk's account of history as he lived it is plainly, yet eloquently told. He is candid, and holds nothing back, even when describing his scalping of a soldier at the Little Big Horn. His memories of his people's ordeals as more and more Americans swarmed over their lands carries us back to what it was like "before".

He talks about his friendship with Crazy Horse, and of other famous chiefs and personages. He talks about what he saw at Wounded Knee in 1890 after the massacre. Perhaps of greater interest, and importance, is Black Elk's narration of his visions, and the societal structure of the Lakota. He described his visions in such detail that it brought tears to my eyes. He had a great power from the time he was a boy. This book is ultimately the story of his search to learn the meaning of his vision, and what he was to do with it.

His comment about the Wounded Knee Massacre is poignant: "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now . . . I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . The nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead." His prayer at the end of his story, and his life, is heartbreaking as he laments this gift he didn't know what to do with.

His decision to allow his life story to be put on paper was a final gift to future generations . . . a blessing for those who receive it. And maybe, just maybe, THAT was what he was supposed to do with his gift.

Black Elk Speaks is the life story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Black Elk tells his story to John G. Neihardt saying early on that it is not the tale of a great hunter or of a great warrior, or of a great traveler; as it is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell. Black Elk shares the many disappointments in his life caused by the many broken treaties of the Wasichus (A term used to designate the white man, but having no reference to the color of his skin). Black Elk was born in the Moon of the Popping Trees (December) on the Little Powder River in the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed (1863). He was three years old when his father's right leg was broken in the Battle of the Hundred Slain (The Fetterman Fight, commonly described as a "massacre," in which Captain Fetterman and 81 men were wiped out on Peno Creek near Fort Phil Kearney, December 21, 1866). His father limped until the day he died, which was about the time when Big Foot's band was butchered on Wounded Knee in 1890. Black Elk tells about the Wounded Knee massacre toward the end of his story. When Black Elk was nine years old he had a Great Vision. He said that the mountain he stood upon in his vision was Harney Peak in the Black Hills (But anywhere is the center of the world," he added). Black Elks "Great Vision" led him to become a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux eight to nine years after receiving it. He could not use the abilities gained from the "Great Vision" as a Medicine or Holy man until he acted it out with the help of another Medicine man.

Black Elk shares the many trials that his band of Oglala Sioux went trough while being mistreated by the Wasichus (white soldiers) as well as the many broken treaties they suffered through along the way. All of the Native Americans living his area around Pine Ridge and the Black Hills were mistreated, and were forced to sell their land even though they didn't want to. Even after parts of the land were taken through unfilled promises these Native Americans were mistreated, with unfilled promises and less food and supplies than were promised them. The white man wanted the land for its gold, killed all the buffaloes that was the main source of the Native Americans food supply at the time, and even massacred many of them throughout the period of Black Elks Life. He tells of the Great Chiefs in the area at that time; Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. He said that Crazy Horse was one of the greatest Ogalala Chiefs and how he did so many things to help his people, but was killed by a soldier at Fort Robinson (Soldiers' Town).

I was amazed after reading "Black Elk Speaks" both by their beliefs and religions as well as the depth of their ability to utilize their visions. Also, how their Medicine & Holy Man were able to utilize their healing skills to heal their people utilizing herbs and special treatments for everything from stomach problems to snow blindness. You will not like how the Native Americans were treated and maybe will have a better understanding why some of them feel and act like they do to this day. We all should read this history to have a better knowledge where the Native Americans history comes from and how their beliefs and medical and religious treatments were developed. Read this book with an open mind, allowing Black Elk to Speak to you...

Then we started for where the bison were. The soldier band went first, riding twenty abreast, and anybody who dared go ahead of them would get knocked off his horse. They kept order, and everybody had to obey. After them came hunters, riding five abreast. Then the head man of the advisers went around picking out the best hunters with the fastest horses, and to these he said: "Good young warriors, my relatives, your work I know is good. What you do is good always; so to-day you shall feed the helpless. Perhaps there are some old and feeble people without sons, or some who have little children and no man. You help these, and whatever you kill shall be theirs." This was a great honor for young men. - Black Elk Speaks

What Black Elk is describing is a society that functions with a village concept. Everyone is thought of when all decisions are made. Imagine if every law that was made benefited every citizen no matter how old, how poor, or how disabled they were. What would our elderly care facilities look like? What would our schools look like? What would our hospitals look like? What would our police force look like? Would we have prisons? If so, would they actually rehabilitate instead of punishing? If we could create a revolution of village to replace this plantation society, that is a new world order that I would sign up for.

When I saw my first Sundance, I was disappointed because one of the dancers bent low and on the back of his beautiful medallion was printed "Lux." What I thought was beaded art was acrylic paint on cardboard. Later, when I met another anthropologist who studied the Sundance, I leanred that no two Sundances are alike, and Lakota pragmatism overrides adherence to ritual. This discovery helps me undrstand Black Elk Speaks.
Much of his vision is idiosyncratic, as he realizes, asking others for help in interpretation. At times, he seems to be improvising in interpretation, which is understandable given Lakota pragmatism. That may be why the vision has inspired so many non-Indians.
In this edition, Vine Deloria gives a good history of the book's value to a world audience; his conribution is most valuable. For a thorough analysis of Neihardt's influence on documenting the words of Black Elk see Raymond DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather. DeMallie is the leading scholar on the Lakota.
I am puzzled why so many reviewers fail to comment on how valuable this work is for Lakota history. It gives us not only Black Elk's view of what happened at the Battle of the Little Big Horn but also the perspectives of two other Lakota participants. The same is true for the Wounded Knee Massacre. Seeing this conflict from the Indian point of view sheds much more light on what happened there.
A primary source for historians and valuable for students of religion but the work should be supplemented with the book by DeMallie.
ernestschusky.com

Let me go straight to the main criticisms - that it is not completely accurate as to American Indian life and that Neihardt gilded the lily by leaving out Black Elk's later conversion. Okay, perhaps the book could have been more complete in a biographical sense. But, we should know that different people will always provide different views and memories of what occurred at any time and place, even a few minutes after an event. And we know when we read about a culture, it is always limited to the experiences and other knowledge of the relators, which may be different than others. My friends/family and I often have different memories of our childhood. But this is not your typical biography, in any event, and I think the critics in that regard miss the point. The book was meant to convey not just the facts of the time and place but both in the real and spiritual view of a participant at Little Big Horn and in the Ghost Dance. It may be exaggerated in some places. It may be wrong or have left some things out. Why this one book should be so criticized for this when virtually all books can be criticized in this manner is hard to understand, though I think the clue is that people are beating their own drums for one religious view or another, both on the "Anglo" and "Indian" sides. Black Elk's life was not told for its own purposes - he was not really a major player. But, through Black Elk eyes Neihardt was able to give us a fascinating window into the Native American culture at that time from a native's viewpoint and it is as good or better than anything else I've read, though of course, you can never read everything. The book touched me when I was a young man as a spiritual/ emotional journey and as a time piece and view into the culture of a world that was crushed by our own culture. It struck me as evocative, beautiful and inspirational at the time. I haven't read it in about 35 years, and I've learned that sometimes it is a mistake to revisit books I loved when I was young (e.g., I cannot read Fennimore Cooper anymore though I loved him as a young man). In summary, I highly recommend this book. I believe you will take something positive away from it too.

John G. Neihardt met Black Elk in 1930. When they met, Black Elk recognized Niehardt as the man he must teach his vision to, so that it might be saved before he died. Niehardt reflects, "His chief purpose was to 'save his Great Vision for men.'"pg. xix At this time Black Elk was old, going blind and he lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation where the Wounded Knee Massacre took place in 1890. Black Elk was a holy man, a visionary and a healer. He was also related to Crazy Horse through his father.

Black Elk Speaks is the true history of the conflicts between the U.S. Government and the Plains Indians from the Native American perspective. Black Elk begins by describing his childhood and his sacred vision and from there he details the coming of the white man to the Black Hills, and the battles that ensued like The Battle at Little Big Horn. He talks about Crazy Horse and how he died, the killing of the buffalo and the Native way of life, and the horrible reservations they were forced on. He teaches about the coming of the Indian Messiah, Wovoka, and The Ghost Dance, Black Elk participated in, and the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Everyone who travels to the Black Hills in South Dakota needs to read Black Elk Speaks. It will provide you with a comprehensive history of the area as well as important geographical places sacred to the Plains Indians. You will learn about the spiritual world of the Lakota, the medicine wheel, the six grandfathers, the importance of visions and the four directions. I read many parts of this book to my children as we traveled to the places that Black Elk speaks about in the book.

Reading Black Elk Speaks was an amazing experience for me while in the Black Hills. I spent some time on the Pine Ridge Reservation (where Black Elk lived) while in the Badlands. I drove for miles and miles and noticed how beautiful the landscape is but could not believe how sparse and desolate the reservation appeared. I wanted to go to the site of Wounded Knee. We stopped at the Indian cultural center and I talked to the man working there. It was 7 pm at this time, we needed gas and food and we were still 2 hours away from where we were staying in Hill City. We got gas another 10 miles up the road where there were two pumps, and a long line to get gas and they accepted cash only. The convenience store seemed like the only store in a 40 miles radius (at least from where I drove from).

Black Elk Speaks shows the hope and pride of an Indian nation fighting to preserve their traditional way of life. Today, the people are living on a reservation that is extremely poor, has a high alcoholism rate, a high dropout rate and are still fighting to maintain their cultural rights. We need to return to Black Elk's vision and embrace it.

Next week in my junior classes, I will begin teaching my annual Native American unit. I’ve always, perhaps self-righteously, prided myself on including this unit, but since I began studying Native American writing and media at the graduate level, specifically the writings of Thomas King, I’ve realized that I may be unwittingly perpetuating some damaging stereotypes. While my unit does contain a sampling of creation myths, some non-fiction historical background, some contemporary news articles, and some modern poetry, the bulk of it focuses on John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks, currently the only title available to me at my school. Though I don’t currently have any other options, I felt compelled to take a closer, critical look at the text and determined that, when viewed through the critical lens provided by King, Black Elk Speaks continues to serve as a valuable, if flawed, component of the public high school curriculum.
The first red flag regarding Black Elk Speaks comes up the second the reader realizes that the spine bears the name “Neihardt,” Nebraska’s favorite nineteenth century white scholar of Indian-ness. Though Neihardt gets the authorial credit, he claims in the introduction that the text is “a faithful record of the narrative and the conversations” with an influential elderly Lakota holy man named Black Elk. What a relief. I suppose the reader can regard this work as told, at least in part, from a Native’s perspective (xix). The narrative begins with Black Elk’s early childhood in the 1860s and concludes with the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Throughout, Black Elk offers detailed, often poetic glimpses into his complex spirituality, as well as heretofore untold Native side of the Ghost Dance controversy and several related battles. Occasionally his accounts, often tinged with humor when the reader considers they are being directed at Neihardt and his white readers, skewer Western values as absurd and hypocritical while illustrating the practicality and wise skepticism of the Sioux:
Up on the Madison Fork the Wasichus [whites] had found much of the yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy, and they wanted to have a road up through our country to the place where the yellow metal was; but my people did not want the road. It would scare the bison and . . . let the other Wasichus come in like a river. They told us they only wanted a little land… but our people knew better (9).
Other parts read more tragically. Black Elk believes he was anointed by the Powers of the World to unite and save his people, however in his old age, he sees himself as “a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoops is broken and scattered. . . and the sacred tree is dead” (270). In the book’s forward, Vine Deloria, Jr. notes that Black Elk shared his great vision with Neihardt “because he wished to pass along to future generations some of the reality of Oglala life,” and in fact the book, with its surprising popularity, has had a tremendous impact on “the contemporary generation of young Indians who have been aggressively searching for the roots of their own in the structure of universal reality” (xiii). Because it offers such a detailed and moving look into the Native side of American history from a Native’s perspective and serves to legitimatize that point of view, Black Elk Speaks occupies an important and deserving role in the curriculum. However, if Black Elk Speaks is the only Native American literature a student encounters in high school, it can also be problematic.
In his book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, Thomas King describes how Hollywood has “crafted three basic Indian types,” including “the bloodthirsty savage, the noble savage, and the dying savage” (34). To clarify, the “dying savage” is dying “[n]ot from a wound. Not from any disease. This was the Indian who was simply worn out, who was well past his ‘best before’ date, who had been pulled under by the rip tide of western expansion, drowned, and thrown up on the beach to rot” (35). When consumed in isolation, as the OPS curriculum tacitly recommends, the book supports King’s “Dying Indian” stereotype and implies that the Native Americans may have belonged in the nineteen century America, but that their time has passed, and they cease to exist in contemporary society. Furthermore, since Black Elk still relies on Neihardt, a Wasichu, to transcribe and publish his story, the book could give the impression that the Lakota Sioux, or Natives in general, have never moved beyond their oral traditions and are incapable of advocating for themselves in print, which is, of course, patently untrue.
Despite this issue, which only exists because my school fails to offer any other Native authored books, Black Elk Speaks is incredibly valuable as an alternative history and a source of complex, moving figurative language. Going forward, I will just have to be sure to always supplement it with something from contemporary Native culture.

Then we started for where the bison were. The soldier band went first, riding twenty abreast, and anybody who dared go ahead of them would get knocked off his horse. They kept order, and everybody had to obey. After them came hunters, riding five abreast. Then the head man of the advisers went around picking out the best hunters with the fastest horses, and to these he said: "Good young warriors, my relatives, your work I know is good. What you do is good always; so to-day you shall feed the helpless. Perhaps there are some old and feeble people without sons, or some who have little children and no man. You help these, and whatever you kill shall be theirs." This was a great honor for young men. - Black Elk Speaks

What Black Elk is describing is a society that functions with a village concept. Everyone is thought of when all decisions are made. Imagine if every law that was made benefited every citizen no matter how old, how poor, or how disabled they were. What would our elderly care facilities look like? What would our schools look like? What would our hospitals look like? What would our police force look like? Would we have prisons? If so, would they actually rehabilitate instead of punishing? If we could create a revolution of village to replace this plantation society, that is a new world order that I would sign up for.

When I saw my first Sundance, I was disappointed because one of the dancers bent low and on the back of his beautiful medallion was printed "Lux." What I thought was beaded art was acrylic paint on cardboard. Later, when I met another anthropologist who studied the Sundance, I leanred that no two Sundances are alike, and Lakota pragmatism overrides adherence to ritual. This discovery helps me undrstand Black Elk Speaks.
Much of his vision is idiosyncratic, as he realizes, asking others for help in interpretation. At times, he seems to be improvising in interpretation, which is understandable given Lakota pragmatism. That may be why the vision has inspired so many non-Indians.
In this edition, Vine Deloria gives a good history of the book's value to a world audience; his conribution is most valuable. For a thorough analysis of Neihardt's influence on documenting the words of Black Elk see Raymond DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather. DeMallie is the leading scholar on the Lakota.
I am puzzled why so many reviewers fail to comment on how valuable this work is for Lakota history. It gives us not only Black Elk's view of what happened at the Battle of the Little Big Horn but also the perspectives of two other Lakota participants. The same is true for the Wounded Knee Massacre. Seeing this conflict from the Indian point of view sheds much more light on what happened there.
A primary source for historians and valuable for students of religion but the work should be supplemented with the book by DeMallie.
ernestschusky.com

Let me go straight to the main criticisms - that it is not completely accurate as to American Indian life and that Neihardt gilded the lily by leaving out Black Elk's later conversion. Okay, perhaps the book could have been more complete in a biographical sense. But, we should know that different people will always provide different views and memories of what occurred at any time and place, even a few minutes after an event. And we know when we read about a culture, it is always limited to the experiences and other knowledge of the relators, which may be different than others. My friends/family and I often have different memories of our childhood. But this is not your typical biography, in any event, and I think the critics in that regard miss the point. The book was meant to convey not just the facts of the time and place but both in the real and spiritual view of a participant at Little Big Horn and in the Ghost Dance. It may be exaggerated in some places. It may be wrong or have left some things out. Why this one book should be so criticized for this when virtually all books can be criticized in this manner is hard to understand, though I think the clue is that people are beating their own drums for one religious view or another, both on the "Anglo" and "Indian" sides. Black Elk's life was not told for its own purposes - he was not really a major player. But, through Black Elk eyes Neihardt was able to give us a fascinating window into the Native American culture at that time from a native's viewpoint and it is as good or better than anything else I've read, though of course, you can never read everything. The book touched me when I was a young man as a spiritual/ emotional journey and as a time piece and view into the culture of a world that was crushed by our own culture. It struck me as evocative, beautiful and inspirational at the time. I haven't read it in about 35 years, and I've learned that sometimes it is a mistake to revisit books I loved when I was young (e.g., I cannot read Fennimore Cooper anymore though I loved him as a young man). In summary, I highly recommend this book. I believe you will take something positive away from it too.

John G. Neihardt met Black Elk in 1930. When they met, Black Elk recognized Niehardt as the man he must teach his vision to, so that it might be saved before he died. Niehardt reflects, "His chief purpose was to 'save his Great Vision for men.'"pg. xix At this time Black Elk was old, going blind and he lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation where the Wounded Knee Massacre took place in 1890. Black Elk was a holy man, a visionary and a healer. He was also related to Crazy Horse through his father.

Black Elk Speaks is the true history of the conflicts between the U.S. Government and the Plains Indians from the Native American perspective. Black Elk begins by describing his childhood and his sacred vision and from there he details the coming of the white man to the Black Hills, and the battles that ensued like The Battle at Little Big Horn. He talks about Crazy Horse and how he died, the killing of the buffalo and the Native way of life, and the horrible reservations they were forced on. He teaches about the coming of the Indian Messiah, Wovoka, and The Ghost Dance, Black Elk participated in, and the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Everyone who travels to the Black Hills in South Dakota needs to read Black Elk Speaks. It will provide you with a comprehensive history of the area as well as important geographical places sacred to the Plains Indians. You will learn about the spiritual world of the Lakota, the medicine wheel, the six grandfathers, the importance of visions and the four directions. I read many parts of this book to my children as we traveled to the places that Black Elk speaks about in the book.

Reading Black Elk Speaks was an amazing experience for me while in the Black Hills. I spent some time on the Pine Ridge Reservation (where Black Elk lived) while in the Badlands. I drove for miles and miles and noticed how beautiful the landscape is but could not believe how sparse and desolate the reservation appeared. I wanted to go to the site of Wounded Knee. We stopped at the Indian cultural center and I talked to the man working there. It was 7 pm at this time, we needed gas and food and we were still 2 hours away from where we were staying in Hill City. We got gas another 10 miles up the road where there were two pumps, and a long line to get gas and they accepted cash only. The convenience store seemed like the only store in a 40 miles radius (at least from where I drove from).

Black Elk Speaks shows the hope and pride of an Indian nation fighting to preserve their traditional way of life. Today, the people are living on a reservation that is extremely poor, has a high alcoholism rate, a high dropout rate and are still fighting to maintain their cultural rights. We need to return to Black Elk's vision and embrace it.

Next week in my junior classes, I will begin teaching my annual Native American unit. I’ve always, perhaps self-righteously, prided myself on including this unit, but since I began studying Native American writing and media at the graduate level, specifically the writings of Thomas King, I’ve realized that I may be unwittingly perpetuating some damaging stereotypes. While my unit does contain a sampling of creation myths, some non-fiction historical background, some contemporary news articles, and some modern poetry, the bulk of it focuses on John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks, currently the only title available to me at my school. Though I don’t currently have any other options, I felt compelled to take a closer, critical look at the text and determined that, when viewed through the critical lens provided by King, Black Elk Speaks continues to serve as a valuable, if flawed, component of the public high school curriculum.
The first red flag regarding Black Elk Speaks comes up the second the reader realizes that the spine bears the name “Neihardt,” Nebraska’s favorite nineteenth century white scholar of Indian-ness. Though Neihardt gets the authorial credit, he claims in the introduction that the text is “a faithful record of the narrative and the conversations” with an influential elderly Lakota holy man named Black Elk. What a relief. I suppose the reader can regard this work as told, at least in part, from a Native’s perspective (xix). The narrative begins with Black Elk’s early childhood in the 1860s and concludes with the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Throughout, Black Elk offers detailed, often poetic glimpses into his complex spirituality, as well as heretofore untold Native side of the Ghost Dance controversy and several related battles. Occasionally his accounts, often tinged with humor when the reader considers they are being directed at Neihardt and his white readers, skewer Western values as absurd and hypocritical while illustrating the practicality and wise skepticism of the Sioux:
Up on the Madison Fork the Wasichus [whites] had found much of the yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy, and they wanted to have a road up through our country to the place where the yellow metal was; but my people did not want the road. It would scare the bison and . . . let the other Wasichus come in like a river. They told us they only wanted a little land… but our people knew better (9).
Other parts read more tragically. Black Elk believes he was anointed by the Powers of the World to unite and save his people, however in his old age, he sees himself as “a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoops is broken and scattered. . . and the sacred tree is dead” (270). In the book’s forward, Vine Deloria, Jr. notes that Black Elk shared his great vision with Neihardt “because he wished to pass along to future generations some of the reality of Oglala life,” and in fact the book, with its surprising popularity, has had a tremendous impact on “the contemporary generation of young Indians who have been aggressively searching for the roots of their own in the structure of universal reality” (xiii). Because it offers such a detailed and moving look into the Native side of American history from a Native’s perspective and serves to legitimatize that point of view, Black Elk Speaks occupies an important and deserving role in the curriculum. However, if Black Elk Speaks is the only Native American literature a student encounters in high school, it can also be problematic.
In his book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, Thomas King describes how Hollywood has “crafted three basic Indian types,” including “the bloodthirsty savage, the noble savage, and the dying savage” (34). To clarify, the “dying savage” is dying “[n]ot from a wound. Not from any disease. This was the Indian who was simply worn out, who was well past his ‘best before’ date, who had been pulled under by the rip tide of western expansion, drowned, and thrown up on the beach to rot” (35). When consumed in isolation, as the OPS curriculum tacitly recommends, the book supports King’s “Dying Indian” stereotype and implies that the Native Americans may have belonged in the nineteen century America, but that their time has passed, and they cease to exist in contemporary society. Furthermore, since Black Elk still relies on Neihardt, a Wasichu, to transcribe and publish his story, the book could give the impression that the Lakota Sioux, or Natives in general, have never moved beyond their oral traditions and are incapable of advocating for themselves in print, which is, of course, patently untrue.
Despite this issue, which only exists because my school fails to offer any other Native authored books, Black Elk Speaks is incredibly valuable as an alternative history and a source of complex, moving figurative language. Going forward, I will just have to be sure to always supplement it with something from contemporary Native culture.

The title of this book is Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglalla Sioux. Back Elk was born in 1863. The story contained in the book ends in about 1890, when Black Elk was 27 years old. The interview with Black Elk occurred in 1931, when Black Elk was 67 or 68 years old. So the book when first printed already omitted 41 years of Black Elk’s life. What happened to the rest of the “Life Story”? The title of the book seems, in this sense, dishonest.

Looking into this a bit further, one discovers that Black Elk converted to Catholicism in probably 1904, when he was about 41. His seven children were baptized Catholic. He was a catechist (taught the catechism) to others. In 1876, he scalped a soldier in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Thirty one years later, in 1907, he was teaching catechism. Amazing! Niehardt must have known this, but doesn’t mention it at all in the book. One would like to know why. The conversion of Black Elk is all the more remarkable in that he was a “holy man” of his native religion and much aggrieved over the taking of his tribe’s lands by the Wasichus.

At times Black Elk’s religion seems pantheistic, but at others seems concordant with Christian revelation. For example, he says “Grandfather, Great Spirit, you have been always, and before you no one has been. There is no one to pray to but you…There is another world beside the one in which we live; that is the real world behind this one, and everything we see here is something of a shadow from that world… We are prisoners of war while we are
waiting here. But there is another world.”

In another vision, toward the end of the book, he speaks of seeing a blooming “holy tree” against which was standing a man with his arms held wide. “His body became beautiful with colors of light.” This sounds like Christ, the Tree of Life, and the event is reminiscent of the Transfiguration.(Matthew 17:1-9).

In the book, we are given a few clues as to the reasons for Black Elk’s conversion. He speaks of a priest (Fr. Francis M Craft): “He (Fr. Craft) was a good man and badly wounded that winter in the butchering of Big Foot’s band (at Wounded Knee). He was a very good man, and not like the other Wasichus” When describing Wounded Knee, he says “I heard there were sisters and priests right in the battle helping wounded people and praying.”

Years later, Hilda Niehardt (John Niehardt’s daughter), said that just before his death in 1950, Black Elk took his pipe and told his daughter, "The only thing I really believe is the pipe religion." Whether that was in fact true, or just a fleeting dark rumination amidst his suffering, we don’t know. But he is buried in St. Agnes Catholic Cemetery in Manderson, South Dakota.

In other words, the book is not the “Life Story” of Nicholas Black Elk. Michael F. Steltenkamp has written two books that fill out the life story of Nicholas Black Elk.

I read this book in college as part of a comparative religion class as the token example of Native American spiritual practice. For people interested in the traditions of the Plains Indian tribes, this long narrative told to the author by Black Elk contains a lot of information about their metaphysics and rituals. Because these tribes relied almost exclusively on oral recitation of their history and theology, there aren't many written accounts where the source material was someone that actually lived the life of a free people, not on a reservation. Just this alone makes it valuable to someone who wants to know about the other America that existed in the Plains before Europeans settled it. Although it should be kept in mind that the nomadic tribes of the Great Plains didn't have the exact same culture as the more sedentary tribes of the East coast. So is an example of some of the culture of Native Americans, not all of it.
The part that grabbed me the most about Black Elk's story is the history. History books tend to be written by the winners; the losers tend to get washed away. In the conflict between European settlers and the Native Americans obviously the European settlers won. This story gives the reader a chance to see the conflict and results from the point of view of someone who was born free to a vibrant culture with old traditions, who watched it all collapse within the span of a few decades. Within one generation the Plains Indians went from being free to migrate with the seasons to where they needed to go to survive, to being forced on to nearly uninhabitable reservations and being demoted to second hand citizens in a nation that sprang up around them almost overnight. I don't want to give you the impression that Black Elk spends the entire story bashing settlers, he doesn't; but his life story was to bear witness to the complete collapse of his civilization. Its the sort of thing that you don't gloss over or take lightly.
Although the book saddened me because I know my comfortable existence as the descendant of European settlers is built on someone else's graveyard, I'm still glad I read this book. Black Elk told his story so people wouldn't forget how his people lived, or that they lived at all. In that respect he did his job well and I take some comfort in learning something from the life story of a humble Medicine Man.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough, despite the fact that it's a bit depressing. It tells a deep spiritual truth about the people, and provides a window into the heart of a very great man. Nicholas Black Elk, whose father was Crazy Horse's cousin, survived to become a very important teacher and spiritual leader, while also finding numerous clever ways to earn a living without compromising his Indian nature.

He was born early enough to have known Crazy Horse, and he later performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows. He traveled the world on a lecture circuit and did many interesting things. This book is a true spiritual classic, and a priceless contribution to Native American Literature. This book even inspired a new, true biography of the life of Crazy Horse. Nicholas Black Elk is mentioned prominently in the book's introduction, and the book contains the only authentic photo of Crazy Horse ever found. Those who want to know more should read CRAZY HORSE APPEARING, available as an e-book for only $3.99.

Crazy Horse Appearing

My gut feeling is that at the height of our folly we have been killing the goose that lays the golden egg - in this case killing off those with the vision and wisdom to get us out of our present predicament. Solomon, when given the opportunity to choose anything he wanted, asked for wisdom - wisdom alone. But with that gift he became the wealthiest man of his era and everything else was given to him. We also lack vision and Proverbs tells us that a nation without vision shall perish. Today our shortcoming is that we lack vision and wisdom and what is more we are so ignorant that we don't even suspect that we lack vision and wisdom. And in that ignorance and the greed, arrogance and contempt that it generates we have almost destroyed the last remaining semblance of a people who had the vision and wisdom that the wise would have traveled the earth to receive. Fortunately, we have this book and through these most wonderful writings the wise of today can tap into the vision and wisdom.
Humans have two natures - the materialistic and the spiritual. In the west today our materialistic side has grown big and bloated while our spiritual side has shrunk to an almost imperceptible size through non-use. Black Elk was a person where the materialistic and the spiritual were in balance. We, too, can regain that balance if we are willing to listen to Black Elk. As the back cover tells us this book was named one of the ten best spiritual books of the 20th century, I am not alone in thinking that this is a good book to read, study, absorb and implement - but only if we are wise enough to understand that, of course.
Black Elk had visions of the unity of humanity and the author tells us of his first visit in August 1930: "It was not of worldly matters that he spoke most, but of things he deemed holy and of 'the darkness of men's eyes'" and that "from early youth he had lived in and for a world of higher values than those of food and shelter, and his years had been one long, passionate devotion to those values as he conceived them" and that Black Elk had said "As I sit here, I can feel in this man beside me a strong desire to know the things of the Other World. He has been sent to learn what I know, and I will teach him." At this point I could not help but think that the author and Black Elk were both exceptional people. How is it that a near-blind man could feel the author's goodness radiating out?
Having arrived at noon and with the sun now setting, Black Elk said: "There is so much to teach you. What I know was given to me for men and it is true and beautiful. Soon I shall be under the grass and it will be lost. You were sent to save it, and you must come back so that I can teach you." Neilhard returned the following spring and listened to the old man talk because he wanted this great vision to be saved for you and me. The author then faced the difficult task - and the sacred obligation - to re-create for us in mood and manner the old man's narrative.
Stephen Covey tells us to imagine that I have just died and people are gathered together to talk about me, reflect on my life and provide ideas of what might be written on my tombstone. What, in a few words, would do I want a visitor 100 years from now, to know about me? I think that I would be content if my gravestone said: "Here lies a man who lived the vision and wisdom of Black Elk in his every thought, word and deed."

“History is written by the victors, not by the vanquished.”

Rarely do we have an opportunity to view history from the perspective of the vanquished. “Black Elks Speaks”, by John Neihardt, gives us another window through which we may look at the past. Neihardt’s window shows us a completely different view of history. A view in which honor and dignity belongs not to the victors, but to the vanquished.

“Black Elk Speaks” grants a Lakota medicine man named Black Elk a voice, and every reader an opportunity to revisit the past. Be warned that this is not a pretty past, it is a troubled one, but one from which each of us can learn a great deal.

Black Elk has a powerful voice, and Neihardt’s work lets us hear it. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the rustling of the winds, you’ll see the symbols he sees, and you’ll understand that deep down, Black Elk was simply a human – just like you or I.

Black Elk, was one of the vanquished. As a youth, he survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. Fourteen years later, in 1890, he managed to escape death at the Wounded Knee Massacre. Neihardt’s work is presented as a narration of Black Elk’s words, it includes but is not limited to these incidents.

I have long held that there are two sides to truth. “Black Elk Speaks” is the other side of the truth Americans generally see. Through Neihardt’s lens the glorious past does not look as glorious, it looks downright shameful.
What is “Black Elk Speaks”?

It is not some fanciful romanticized Cowboys and Indians tale of the sort on which I was raised. It is another version of the truth, one in which an honorable, dignified, and ancient culture were systematically cheated, misled, murdered, and ultimately destroyed in the name of western progress.

It is a powerful revelation of how misuse and abuse of power inevitably results in tragedy. It is a tale of rampant greed allowed to go entirely unchecked. It is a tale of a government spurring its people on, allowing them to ride roughshod over those who get in the way of their vision of progress. It is a tale of symbolism misunderstood. It is a tale of tragedy.

Is “Black Elk Speaks” a fun read? Absolutely not. It disturbed me deeply to learn that, in regard to US History, I had never been told the whole truth. Equally disturbing is the realization that came with this knowledge, that many of the supposed truths I had accepted were so badly biased toward one side that they amounted to outright lies.

Why read something that isn’t enjoyable? Where do you derive enjoyment and satisfaction, from learning, or from being blissfully unaware?

If we can’t learn from the past, then we should hold no hope for the future. Black Elk Speaks grants us a glimpse of a past in which many mistakes were made. It really is a learning opportunity for the future.

“Black Elk Speaks” is not a “story” or a “tale”, it is another peoples’ truth.

If you're interested, you may find my further thoughts on “Black Elk Speaks” on my blog, located on the web at cgayling.com

_Over the years I have read this book in the wilderness and in the wasteland. Every time that I have reread it I have come away renewed.

_There are just so many levels on which this account can be appreciated. It is one of the best first-hand accounts of plains life- from camp life, to the march, the hunt, courting, healing, etc. It is also one of the best first-hand accounts of historical events- the Fetterman Fight, the Wagon box Fight, Red Cloud's Treaty, the Custer Fight, Wounded Knee... It is also a first-rate autobiography of the deepest thoughts of a man who fears that he may not have lived up to his God-given destiny. But, above all, it is a legitimate Revelation from the world beyond.

_At times Black Elk seems to despair that he didn't live up to his great vision. Personally, I do not see this. He did what he was supposed to do. First, he brought his vision to his people in the form of the magnificent Horse Dance. Then, in his twilight years, he wisely brought the same vision to the outside world in the form of this book. This was too powerful and universal a vision to be confined to one people alone. Every part of it resonates with the Perennial Philosophy, the eternal religion that underlies all true Tradition- from the World Tree at the center of the people's hoop, to the certain knowledge that the things of this world are but a shadow of the true Reality of the next.

_As far as the sacred herb of four blossoms is concerned that he saw at the end of the forth ascent- that was the rebirth of the sacred tree from sacred seed. This book is that seed.

Black Elk's account of the life of the plains indians at the close of the 19th Century is an excellent first hand account of how the United States forced change on the Native Americans and how they struggled to find a way to save their culture in the face of such a radically different and sometimes violent opposing philosophy. Through out the story, Black Elk indicates a level of sadness at being forced into violent confrontation and forced moves around the upper midwest and into Canada. As he puts it in, all they wanted to do was to live in the land that was theirs and it was no longer theirs. His accounts of how the United States routinely violated treaties that were forced on the Native Americans is also a source of the sadness that pervades his account.
In addition to providing a great accounting of the injustices that were committed by the United States, Black Elk also gives an excellent insiders view to the culture of the Lakota. The use of visions, sweatlodges, and dances as a way of promoting their nations is recounted in great detail and provides real insight into how this tribe lived prior to being forced onto a reservation.
The writing of Black Elk speaks is also well done. It is not dumbed down, but at the same time, it was not written over the head of the average reader. There are some instances where going to the appendix to find a good meaning for some of the native words included in the text is helpful, but this is not in the least bit distracting to the readers. If you are looking for an excellent first hand account of the close of the 19th century and the US treatment of Native Americans, look no further than this.

_Over the years I have read this book in the wilderness and in the wasteland. Every time that I have reread it I have come away renewed.

_There are just so many levels on which this account can be appreciated. It is one of the best first-hand accounts of plains life- from camp life, to the march, the hunt, courting, healing, etc. It is also one of the best first-hand accounts of historical events- the Fetterman Fight, the Wagon box Fight, Red Cloud's Treaty, the Custer Fight, Wounded Knee... It is also a first-rate autobiography of the deepest thoughts of a man who fears that he may not have lived up to his God-given destiny. But, above all, it is a legitimate Revelation from the world beyond.

_At times Black Elk seems to despair that he didn't live up to his great vision. Personally, I do not see this. He did what he was supposed to do. First, he brought his vision to his people in the form of the magnificent Horse Dance. Then, in his twilight years, he wisely brought the same vision to the outside world in the form of this book. This was too powerful and universal a vision to be confined to one people alone. Every part of it resonates with the Perennial Philosophy, the eternal religion that underlies all true Tradition- from the World Tree at the center of the people's hoop, to the certain knowledge that the things of this world are but a shadow of the true Reality of the next.

_As far as the sacred herb of four blossoms is concerned that he saw at the end of the forth ascent- that was the rebirth of the sacred tree from sacred seed. This book is that seed.

This is an incredible read: an Oglalla Lakota priest and cousin to the famed Crazy Horse relates the story of his life, and his people providing the reader with an intimate and detailed view of Native America at the close of the 19th century. Black Elk gives an eye-wtiness account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the campaigns of Crook, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee.
It is on the surface the life story of Black Elk, but it is also the story of the Lakota people - as you read it, you get an appreciation of Lakota life and culture. As another reader pointed out, one wonders what was left out, but on the whole there is very little to suggest of a "noble savage" subtext to the book. Of course it ends on a quasi-tragic note - the Lakota living on a reservation in South Dakota, Black Elk an old man, feeling helpless to return the power of the "people's hoop" to his band. Much more than history, it is also poetry and a reminder of what America has lost of its indigenous soul. The book has something to offer everyone, even if it is a simple reflection on our own lives and culture as compared to that of the Native Americans.

Black Elk of the Ogallala Sioux (or Lakota, their real name) led quite an important life among his people. He was present at Custer's Last Stand and the Wounded Knee Massacre, and even toured Europe with Buffalo Bill. John G. Neihardt has given us this very important life story as told by Black Elk himself. The saga of Black Elk and his people during their final years of freedom is very important from a biographical and historical standpoint. Contrary to popular opinion, this book is not really a treatise on Native American religion, as it is only Black Elk's personal story, though there is much valuable material on spirituality as he saw it. His many messianic visions are described in great detail. These would be looked on by Westerners as fever-induced dreams, but they still had great significance in Black Elk's life and the fate of his people. Also interesting are his tales of working as a medicine man and curing sick people. Instead of dismissing such tales, we should look on them as great examples of the power of positive thinking, not to mention homeopathic remedies. There has always been some concern about how much Neihardt altered the story to fit Western writing methods, with possible losses to Black Elk's true narrative. But one of the great modern Native American activists, Vine Deloria, gives his endorsement in the new introduction. While not quite the compendium of spiritual knowledge that many people think it is, this is still an extremely valuable and enlightening life story of a man who has much to teach us.

I read this book while camping at a lake with my family when my children were very young. Being out in nature when I ready made it more meaningful top me. It awakened my Indian hertiage (Chickasaw) and launched me into a lifetime of study and reading about the First Nation Americans. I recommend this book and also Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. Especially if you have parents, grandparents or great-grancparents who really were/are Inidans. Many people claim Indian blood but cannot actually say how they got it. So, they are not really Indians.

Black Elk Speaks is a fascinating book about the life of a Lakota Medicine Man named Black Elk. He was interviewed by John G. Neihardt, a poet, over the course of many years and this book is the result.

It's very good and I highly recommend it. It gives an honest portrayal of the life and massacres the Native Americans endured. If it has one fault it's that sometimes the writing is a little too "poetic" as if Neihardt sometimes takes personal liberty with the descriptive passages. But other than that there is every other reason to recommend this book that purports to be, and probably is, a transcript of on man's remembrances.

If you are writing westerns and went to get some insight into the culture and thinking of Native Americans, and the horror they had to endure, this life story of Black Elk would be hard to beat.

I was very surprised to find that this book was not the 'real' Premiere Edition.
The real Premiere Edition has color drawings on glossy papaer in the back of the book not black and white copies on plain white paper and the rest of the real Premiere Edition
has a better quality paper also. Sorry, Very Disappointed. Book sent back.
I've read the book before and really liked it just beware of what your buying.

Mari Sandoz both admired and modeled much of her work about the Plains Indians on the work of Neidhardt. Both worked on using the flow of the native language as opposed to a word for word translation, and both spent time with Indians, learning their culture and getting first hand information. They took advantage of what is no longer available to us, first person histories from those who actually lived the free life on the Plains. They also did more for native cultures than any white person before or since, by writing down this information for future generations. One thing I found enjoyable about Black Elk, and the Sandoz books is that while the Indians they spoke with took their religion and duties very seriously, they also had a great sense of humor, and didn'tt mind poking fun at themselves as well as whites. I found the story of the warriors who stopped to eat a buffalo during the battle of the Rosebud particularly humorous.

Over the years I've read a number of books which have powerfully influenced me and Black Elk Speaks is in the top 10. It has deeply impacted my life and has helped influence writing my own story of Native American Medicine; A Man Among The Helpers. http://www.the store.com/Man-Among-Helpers-Salvatore-Gencarelle/dp/1602649391/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393688015&sr=8-1&keywords=a+man+among+the+helpers

The events of Black Elk Speaks occurs in the late 1800s and into the mid 1900s. Black Elks tale of vision and life is a continuation of a long story which has its roots in a time long forgotten. This story continues to this day. Through Black Elk's word I feel powerfully connected to the ancestors of my teachers. I was educated with in the same family group that Black Elk speaks of. This I write about in my book A Man Among the Helpers.

"Black Elk Speaks" is one of the best book ever written on the history of the people in America.
This is a moving and thoroughly compelling work which provides a first-hand account of the life and culture of the Sioux Indian nation and their relations with the United States Government. There is a great deal in this work: visions, battles, scalpings, loss, and defeat. It is a great read and certainly worthy of the epithet Classic.

Enjoy.

Black Elk was a holy man, a medicine man, loved and respected by his people. He was also a visionary. This is his story.

But this book is more than a simple autobiography. This book gives glimpses of the religious attitudes and practices of the Oglala Sioux. Black Elk gives details of visions he had and ceremonies he performed.

This book is also a historical piece. Stories of the battle at Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee have been written by white men but here we have the Native American side of these events.

This is a wonderful book and anyone interested in American history should own a copy.

I was a student at the time when various fields (Native American studies, Women studies, Afro-American studies, etc.) were just being established, and although I took a minor in anthropology, I never got into the topics underwritten by these new departments. Since I also worked in the book store, I was aware that two of the key texts for Native American studies were Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Black Elk Speaks. Sad to say, but it took me nearly 30 years before I read either book.
The former book was written by a sympathetic outsider who painted the American Indian as a helpless victim of European greed--which for the most part he was/is. The latter was dictated to an interested party, John G. Neihardt, and is the words and reminiscences of Nicholas Black Elk, who witnessed as a child or participated in as an adult, some of the major events of the American Indian Wars that were the outcome of the US expansion into the West. For those of us reared on John Ford westerns, manifest destiny and pioneering had a patriotic ring, as well they might most of them having been made in the years immediately following WWII. In the social souring of the sixties and seventies that brought so many discontented groups vocally into the foreground, it became more obvious that the expression of manifest destiny by our European forebearers spelled manifest disaster for the Native American populations across the country. An outgrowth of the discontent of the "younger generation" was the establishment of the afore said departments. That of American Indian studies introduced us to the more honest, or at least more balanced, story of the indigenous people of the country.
Black Elk Speaks is a superb eye witness account of the Sioux experience with European expansion into the Dakotas. It is a clear narrative of the frightening attack on a child's village by an invader intent upon killing women, children and the elderly as well as the males of fighting age. It tells of a life that revolves around the buffalo, an animal whose numbers were countless during the author's youth but dwindled to near extinction along with the American Indian himself by the end of the narrator's life. The story is one of growing up in a society where the young learn their roles from all adults by observation and imitation, where each individual graduates into the next age grade together with and by the aide of his peers, and where part of what is learned is not simply ones expected "rights" but ones expected responsibilities as well.
Although I enjoyed the story as a whole, I found the narration of the subject's spiritual experiences somewhat tedious, but then I find the repetitive style of the heroic poems of ancient Greece, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, and those of Saxon England, like Beowulf, somewhat difficult also. I am a product of my age, a child of the printed rather than the recited word. Perhaps if I had been reared at the fireside of the great houses of ancient Greece and England I would find myself more at one with the rhythm of this style of story telling. Acknowledging this as my own shortcoming, I will say that my favorite part of the book is the author's story of his adventures with a Wild West show in England, of his having been abandoned there when the Tour went home and of his exploits attempting to get home again. The most moving part of the narrative I'll share with you:
"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth,--you see me now a pitiful old man who had done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead P. 207)."
Powerful.

I have to say that Black Elk Speaks is one of the most fascinating books that I've read in a while. It has given me a better understanding of the Lakota people, in particular the significance of visions. The whole process of "civilizing" the American West was a dubious undertaking, the illegitimacy of which has, unfortunately, become distorted by rhetoric and romanticism. This illegitimacy is something that America has naturally been reluctant to face, and it something that will likely never be rectified. Sad really, as what happened to the Lakota, among many others, contradicts quite blatantly the nobel principles that America has, since it's creation, claimed to stand for. Black Elk's story has heightened my understanding of the injustices that the Lakota and other Indians faced. It is an excellent source for those who want a more balanced and truthful account of what happened during c. 1870 to 1890 on the American frontier.

"Black Elk Speaks" is one of the best book ever written on the history of the people in America.
This is a moving and thoroughly compelling work which provides a first-hand account of the life and culture of the Sioux Indian nation and their relations with the United States Government. There is a great deal in this work: visions, battles, scalpings, loss, and defeat. It is a great read and certainly worthy of the epithet Classic.

Enjoy.

This is one of the singularly most powerful narratives I have ever read, and, being an academic focused on Native Languages, I have had the opportunity to read many. Black Elk tells the story of his life and his spiritual experiences unabashedly, and with the force and clarity that come with wide experience and careful contemplation. He was a singular individual, and his story is unique, even among his own people. His account is dense and complex, especially regarding his spirituality - and it is naturally very confusing to a Westerner. The historical accounts are fascinating, and more accessible, and drive home with vivid imagery the human beings our country devoured in the name of "progress". (Something particularly useful to remember at this juncture in our history)
For his story to have the right impact, you must believe what Black Elk says to be true. If you're coming to his story for "feel good" new-age spirituality, go read something mushy from the Oprah Book club. Any sort of Western paternalism, most often cloaked in new-age terminology and half-witted sophomoric Literary criticism, about how Black Elk uses "wonderful metaphors" and "fabulous, alive imagery" is really missing the point and dishonors one of the key figures of a very important Native American religious movement - the Sun Dance. This movement is not only important to the Sioux, but to many other tribes in the great plains.
Black Elk is telling you the truth. He wasn't "smoking peyote" as some suggest, or anything of the sort. He really did see a red buffalo that led him through the spirit world. Suggesting that he was confused or delusioned, or feeding half-truths to Mr. Neihardt is like patting him on the head and telling him to trot off to bed so that the 'big boys' can think important things. If you don't accept that premise, you will never understand him or any of his people.
One aspect of his life that has fascinated me the most is his fearless application of faith. He was given a vision in which he was told that a bow would protect him in battle. So he promptly got the bow, and then went out in front of the Union machine guns with it held over his head, riding back and forth. After several trips across the line, he was hit once with a bullet. This he attributes to his own momentarily failing faith, and not to the falsity of the vision. Another man believed he could stop bullets with a sacred pelt-cloak draped across him. He put it on and stood calmly at the crest of the hill in full view of the Union guns. After a while, he came back down and shook the bullets from his clothing onto the ground. I find myself wondering how many of the sweating, blubbering "religious" people in the modern age would be so brave as to put their professed faith into such direct action. Black Elk and many of his fellow warriors LIVED the "matrix"'s dualistic philosophy instead of watching it on TV.
This underscores an excellent message in his narrative - where have we come to? Why do we live this false life now? The trappings of modern civilization that we have been taught to see as blessings and indispensible to life were seen by Black Elk as a curse on his people. They robbed his people of their power and made them helpless. It is left to wonder if this technology has done the same for its creators.

I read "Black Elk Speaks" by Nebraska Poet Laureate John Neihardt way back in the 1970s; I taught it and assigned it to my students and, sometimes, over the years -- I've quoted and misquoted from this classic. At last, I've heard Black Elk! It is a revelation.

In my declining years, I discover that I hear better than I read. Books that I hear -- Live in my memory; words I read, for the most part, remain on the page. When I put down a book I'm reading -- I'm done with it for the moment. When I stop listening - the audio book stays in my head and I look forward to hearing more.

Scott Peterson reads Black Elk Speaks and I cannot imagine a better reader. Hearing him makes perfect sense
since it is a story that was told by the old Sioux Chief in 1931 near the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Mr. Peterson, a Cayuga, of the Iroquois Six Nations of upstate New York has an interesting voice and his reading reveals the structure of Neihardt's work. I had forgotten or never noticed that there are speakers in addition to Black Elk. We hear from other Chiefs, Standing Bear and Fire Thunder who were part of Black Elk's life and memories; they confirm and supplement the old man's recall. Black Elk was at Custer's defeat in 1876 - the Battle of Little Big Horn. He calls it, "The Rubbing Out of Long Hair." We might call it our nation's last great victory. Later, Black Elk signs on with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and performs before Queen Victoria in England. Black Elk was a shaman, a medicine man and healer.

Hearing Black Elk's story impressed the tragic but also illuminated comical episodes that had escaped me. Of course political correctors will rush to inform that we only hear what dead white man Neihardt thinks we should hear. Yes, that's true; the story is filtered through the time in which it was set down, nonetheless: Neihardt's respect for his subject shines through and, it is worth remembering that Black Elk chose Neihardt after refusing to speak to others.

As a young boy, Black Elk received visions and he couldn't understand them. However, people come to see that there was something special about this boy; in time he understands that he has been given a powerful vision with which to save his Nation. Today, we search for purpose or mission in life. Black Elk was given one and, it would seem, went to his grave feeling he had failed. Through the voice of Scott Peterson, Black Elk's words and vision live. There is a bonus that comes with this recording. When I picked up my tattered copy of Black Elk to check some detail: There was Peterson's voice in my head! How did that happen?

Not much to add to the other reviews. This is an excellent account of the shameful whiteman's extinction of the most beautiful people to inhabit the earth (I am white :) Did you know that at one time, the American Indians were 1/5 or 20% of the world's population. They lived in virtual peace for 10,000 years, with minor skirmishes, never genocide. There was trade from the tip of South America all the way to Maine. It is the biggest extinction in recorded history. This book is an account of a great leader seeing his people being destroyed. A great book.

This is the biography of Black Elk, a wichasha wakon (priest) of the Oglala Sioux, as recorded by John Neihardt. This is not some cheesy new age fiction nor is it a dry documentary told from a western view point. This is the actual life story of a holy man and goes into great detail about his visions. From his words we are able to catch a glimpse of Native American religion and spirituality on the Great Plains as it was in the late 1800s/early 1900s. This stands out as one of the greatest works on Native American religion to date. I highly rocemmend that ANYONE read this book.

Black Elk's poetic self-disclosure, revealed through an ame fraternelle, Indians/Native Americans-intoxicated writer John Neihardt, towers highly over "spiritual" claptrap polluting our age. When I compare this confession to truly good books, like Yogananda's or Sogyal Rinpoche's bestselling presentations of the Advaita or Vajrayana Thanatology, or, even to that great book of wisdom, Jung's autobiography ( Memories, Dreams and Reflections )- they all are dwarfed when put alongside the fierce narrative of starvation, death, suffering, elation, visions, life's grandeur and God's betrayals.
Average materialist or fundamentalist ( Christian, Muslim,..) will easily dismiss Black Elk as just another religious hysteric or devil's servant.
Various "Native American activists" will use ( and are using it, intermittently ) as a political weapon. They are using it as a sort of codified scripture in "back to roots" religious ceremonies. I don't blame them. But: "Black Elk Speaks" is much, much more.
1. It is relegated to, for us, Europeans ( I am a Croat, therefore a "white European" ), a "spiritual literature" category. Good. Just, as a rendition of a natural man's ( and St. Augustine was a natural man, make no mistake about it ) harrowing struggle between forces & pressures of inner and outer cosmos, between trembling hope, faith and a sense of inescapable fatum- this is unsurpassed work, a worthy companion to Whitman's or Tolstoy's, St. Augustine's or Omar Hayyam's masterpieces.
2. For any non-dogmatic reflective man the Jack Wilson/Wanekia's story and ghost-dance catastrophe at Wounded Knee present an especially painful read; a much stronger expression of God's betrayal than the famed 89.th Psalm. I don't see how usual excuses ( karma, gnostic mythologies, false prophecy, ..) could work convincingly here.
3. At the end: read it. You won't find dull self-centredness that wrecks most of the contemporary prose. Nor pettiness of an alienated vacuous "seeker after ( his ) precious salvation". Here, you are offered banquet for the soul: harsh, harrowing life's realities; revelation of Unity of all beings; physical, moral, and emotional travails; ordinary life as a pattern in earthly-divine tapestry; and, finally, tragedy transmuted into, if not a triumph, then a humble acceptance, a resignation to the eternal life that *cannot* be completely known.
"...any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore
never send to know
for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee."

I truly wanted to like this book more than I did. I had read all the great reviews, and have read a great deal of Native American history. Black Elk's first-hand accounts of some of the most famous moments in American history are priceless, as was his description of Sioux culture; these easily rated five stars. But lengthy chunks of this book are descriptions of Black Elk's dream-like visions. They were obviously very personal, and Black Elk even wonders if he should try to recreate them for auhtor John Neihardt. For me, the re-telling of these visions through an interpreter and then written by a white man left the passages a convoluted and overly-detailed morass. I would, however, still recommend that anyone interested in Native American history read this book.

Not only is this the classic biography of Black Elk, by John Neihardt, but the annotations are extraordinary, and I must say the design of the text is beautiful! Far easier to read and pleasing to the eye than the vast majority of annotated books.

If you want Black Elk Speaks, THIS is the edition to purchase.

It says on the jacket of this book that Black Elk Speaks belongs in the company of 'religious classics'. Maybe so, but even if you regard his visions as indicative of a religious experience, the parts of the book dedicated to the description of these visions make for rather tedious reading. The real meat of the book is his decriptions of the last of the major indian battles at Rosebud, Little Big Horn (Custer's Last Stand), and Wounded Knee. Black Elk and his friends were there, and lived through those harrowing days. A must-read book for anyone who wants to know how it really was.

Black Elk Speaks rates with William Bartram's Travels as what Thomas Carlyle called "biblical articles" of America's cultural and psychic history. It is an amazing story, yet it has the ring of authenticity at a time when there is so much fakery in the book world. It certainly rates five stars.

This was an excellent account of Sioux history from a Native American point of view. I read this book in 2 days it is very interesting and easy to read. I agree with another review who liked the fact that they poked fun at themselves and the soldiers. The visions are very descriptive. Black Elk was involved in most of the well known historical points for the Sioux.

I loved this. But I am fascinated with the Native American struggle, so this was just what I was looking for. The struggle, the ritual, the honor involved with the people of that day - it makes me respect the culture so much. I feel horrible about the way they are/have been treated. Even though the story is many years old, unfortunatly it still applies.

I first came across this book from a required reading list for an anthropology class in college. What an excellent book. Very historical, very interesting. I re-read it every few years. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, but most of all, it will give you understanding in the plight of the Native American

people during a regretful era in America's history.

This book is a phenomenal edition with enlightening notes and good, sturdy paper and all the prefaces. This edition also has all of the Standing Bear paintings, in color - and they are beautiful.

If you want to pick up Black Elk Speaks, I recommend this edition.

This is the story of Black Elk's life, as he told it to John Neihardt through an interpreter. This book shows much about the culture and thought procces of the Oglala Sioux. Black Elk grew up in the ways of his people, seeing the leaders in a time when they fought for their lives against the US Army. But more importantly he was a spiritual leader of his people. He tried his best to prevent the disaster that seemed to overtake his people, but according to his own account he failed. His descriptions of his agony and anger at Wounded Knee are particularily vivid.

Perhaps THE book on the shaman caught between the ecstacy of his visions and the tragic world in which they find no fulfillment. And although narrated by a white person, a historically valid account of the persecution of an entire people.

If you want a look in to the Native American tradition and you want to see everything from the viewpoint of the inside of their expansive belief system, this is the only book that you want to purchase. It tells the tale of Black Elk. Through the tender care of the author his world is brought to life. I found it an exceptional vision for the world. If we would only see the Universe though different eyes, then maybe the world would be able to pull itself from its centries of downward spin and focus more on the aspect of the Self and the Spirit

Both Thomas E.Mails and John Niehardt have brought to life the true nature of the Native American in their masterly renditions of their interviews with these Medicine (Holy) men, both Fools Crow and Black Elk. The result is an understanding of the simple honesty, good nature and trust that initially left them so open to exploitation. More importantly, they demonstrated a sincere belief in God that the 'White Man' was singularly lacking in the early pioneers. Their beliefs ran parallel with the Primitive Church as established by Jesus during his ministry in the Middle Ages.Fools Crow

I can only express that the book has arrived quite earlier than predicted and in good conditions. I cannot say much about the content as I did not start reading the book yet. However, I bought this book along with others on the same topic as I am interested in the spirituality of the Lakota tribe and I guess this author is one of the best in the matter

cheers

Black Elk is as visionary as Christ, Moses and Buddah. His story presented within the simple bounds of this book goes further than just the literary meaning. Throughout, the reader is always encouraged to search within, turn their eyes to themselves and listen to the spirit cradled there. He (Black Elk) has taught me to listen to my spirit. I hope anyone who reads this book does as much.

This chilling-tale riddled with metaphors was something I could hardly put down. It's classic mythology at it's best, combining stories of a tribe with the true myths of the Native American's backgroud. This is definatley a worth-while read for anyone who has an english background; or even those who are interested in another culture.

Great book, but to learn much more about Black Elks life, read "Black Elk - Holy Man of the Oglala" by Michael F. Steltenkamp. It covers the last fifty years of his life, and will give you a different perspective of "Black Elk Speaks".

Like some of the other reviewers,I felt the most fascinating parts of the book were the firsthand accounts of historical events. The dreams were hard to follow or understand. I have a friend whose Dad owns a farm in Neb and he described how marijauna grew wild in the gullies and creekbanks. Kinda helps explain some of the horses turning into lighting bolts and warriors flying around as spears.

This chilling-tale riddled with metaphors was something I could hardly put down. It's classic mythology at it's best, combining stories of a tribe with the true myths of the Native American's backgroud. This is definatley a worth-while read for anyone who has an english background; or even those who are interested in another culture.

Great book, but to learn much more about Black Elks life, read "Black Elk - Holy Man of the Oglala" by Michael F. Steltenkamp. It covers the last fifty years of his life, and will give you a different perspective of "Black Elk Speaks".

Like some of the other reviewers,I felt the most fascinating parts of the book were the firsthand accounts of historical events. The dreams were hard to follow or understand. I have a friend whose Dad owns a farm in Neb and he described how marijauna grew wild in the gullies and creekbanks. Kinda helps explain some of the horses turning into lighting bolts and warriors flying around as spears.

illustrations by Standing Bear all missing and the listing from what I remember was "good". But It was only .98 cents. Because of the good rating I was surprised to see the missing pages, I would have paid more. It should have been listed as "poor". I have since received an email letting me know I have a refund which honestly I did not expect as the story is exceptional about a very exceptional person so can be read.

A person's vision is his own; it is meant for him alone. You cannot live another person's dream. Black Elk's vision was for Black Elk; you must live your own dream. People keep trying to interpret Black Elk's dream, but they do not understand the colors or the realms he was in. I agree with the reviewer who is frustrated by Native American books "told to" Non-Indian intermediaries.
Times have changed. Indians are educated enough to write their own histories and personal accounts. The discriminating book buyer of Native American books should consider the author's background before buying and absorbing the book. Did the author grow up on the reservation? Did he eat commodity cheese and chopped meat? Is he a traditional person, for instance, does he pow wow dance, or participate in the sweat lodge or sundance, or partake of any of the ceremonies belonging to his tribe?
You would want a woman to teach Women's Studies. You would want a Black person to teach Black History. You would want a Vietnam Vet to discuss Vietnam. Doesn't it follow, in fairness, that a Native American author should generate a Native American book?
Respectfully submitted, JMW

how can you suggest this book when the ending is the author's rather than black elk's words? this is another example of white people speaking FOR native americans. at the very least it misrepresents a great man's words and puts them in a white person's context. can we not get beyond writing for europeans?

Well, after many years of having this on the shelf I finally read it. As a chronicle of a man's life it is impressive and poignant; as "the core of a North American Indian theological canon," as Vine Deloria says in her hyperbolic foreword to the book, I can only say that if that is true then it does not speak well for the North American Indian's vision of the universe or of the connection of man and life with the great All. Black Elk lost me when he broke the neck of a dog in yet another stupid Indian ceremony that fails to recognize the place of animal life in the greater scheme of consciousness. Shortsighted of me? Perhaps. I don't really care. I am sick of theologies that don't respect the sanctity of the individual consciousness of animals. This is a sticking point for me. Islam goes to the trash bin for this, and Buddhism is full of hypocrites that pay only lip service to what they call compassion for all sentient life--until they are hungry! It is time to move to another level. Black Elk had a vision and out of body experience a couple of times in his life; so what? As with all of us, the interpretation of the experience makes it smaller than it need be. This book is not what some people want it to me.