In 1931, a poet by the name of John Neihardt journeyed
into rural South Dakota to interview Indians as research for
an epic poem. He encountered an extremely elderly member of
the Lakota tribe by the name of Black Elk, whom Neihardt
hoped could remember the old ways. The interview proved
difficult; Neihardt knew no Lakota and Black Elk knew no
English; but with two-way translations provided by Black
Elk's grandson Ben, a remarkable narrative emerged. The
edited form of this narrative, which Neihardt entitled
"Black Elk Speaks", became much more famous than either
Neihardt's epic poem or even Neihardt himself.
As Black Elk explained, when he was a child he had
received a vision that he was to become a holy man. In
Lakota society receiving a revelation of that sort through
dreams or altered states of consciousness was not considered
unusual, but Black Elk took it extremely seriously. He did
not reveal to anyone the nature of his vision until he was
seventeen; by that time he been uprooted from his native
lands by the backlash that resulted from the defeat of
Custer at Little Big Horn, and was living on a Sioux
reservation. But he felt strongly, as a result of his
vision, that it was incumbent upon him to restore the Lakota
By the time Neihardt met him, Black Elk had pretty much
given that idea up. After a brief stint traveling with
Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, he had converted to
Catholicism, changed his name to Nicholas Black Elk, and
(with the exception of not speaking English) now lived a
rather conventional life. This was also a fairly typical
result of the debacle at Wounded Knee, and it was certainly
the one which white society at that time demanded. But
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