Black Elk:
Black Elk was born into a tribe of the Plains Indians, the Oglala Sioux. The Sioux were hunters, and they relied mainly on the buffalo. Buffalo was their main source for food as well as shelter and clothing. The Sioux lived throughout the Midwestern plains of North America, until they were put on Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Residents of Pine Ridge refer to themselves often time as Sioux, Siouxs, Indian, and Lakota.# As America flourished, the Lakota found themselves being pushed westwards. As a means of maintaining their identity, as well as their survival, religion was integral. Religion allowed them to be resilient against their enemies, both in the physical and spiritual world. Religion allowed for adaptation in Lakota society as America pushed them westward. It was the Holy Men, such as Black Elk, that underlined the Lakota society, and kept a nomadic people together. What is known of Black Elk comes from his teachings. By his own accounts, he was born in the "Moon of the Popping Trees on the Little Powder River When the Four Crows Were Killed"#, or December, 1863. Black Elk received his first vision at the age of five:The first time I rode a horse I was five years old and my father made me some bows and arrows
Among them all, perhaps the two most significant were the ritual of the Sun Dance and the ritual of the Sacred Pipe. Nine years later, Black Elk became a medicine man of the Lakota. This was not a dream--it actually happened. Along the black road and the red road, there existed an intersection. The emphasis of the Ghost Dance was to obtain a vision of one's dead relations through a trance. The Sun Dance was an annual community affair, associated with the buffalo hunt, that functioned as an impetus to war. The ban was a result of the continuing expansionism westward of the United States. Black Elk's new Sun Dance became a product of both Catholicism and the ghost Dance, merging the two religions into one culture. Army was able to turn their attention westward to Indian fighting. The Ghost Dance was done, not as a replacement of the Sun dance, but as a substitute for it under the ban. # Speaking of the hoop, Black Elk said:Imagine a hoop so large that everything is in it - all two-leggeds like us, the four-leggeds, the fish of the streams, the wings of the air, and all green things that grow. The red road represented spiritual understanding. Often times, more radical rituals were included in the Sun Dance: Some, passing a knife through the breast and arms, attach cords or thongs thereto, which are fastened at the other end to the top of a tall pole raised for the purpose, and thus they hang, suspended only by these cords, for two, three, and even four days, gazing upon vacancy, their minds intently fixed upon the object in which they desire to be assisted by their deity, and waiting for a vision from above. # The dance took place inside a circle of buffalo skins with an awning of buffalo skins stretched above, to which were attached a post in the center of the circle. Even while the Ghost Dance was being performed, the Sun Dance was still done in secret.
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Acceptance Essays
