Crazy Horse had also had a powerful vision and spent much time alone and apart from his tribe, where he communed with the spiritual world. Other well known Sioux leaders play roles in his story, most notably Black Elk’s cousin Crazy Horse who the Sioux regarded as a truly gifted and mystical warrior and a leader. He didn’t know how his power worked, but he felt that he was only a conduit for a life force – a power that was much greater than he. Finally with the help of some other Sioux medicine men, he undertook a ritual with his tribe which gave him clarity on who he was and what he was supposed to do, and he became a healer of sick people. For a long time, he didn’t know what to do with the vision or his power, and he felt it was a burden. It it was truly a baptism by fire.Īll through the book he recognizes that during his vision, “the six Grandfathers” he encountered had given him special power and a mission to fulfill during his lifetime. As he got into his teens, tensions with the whites were escalating and there were battles and killings, and at age 14, he finds himself in his first warrior role responding to Custer’s attack on his village at the Little Big Horn, and his description fits other accounts I’ve read. The power of his boyhood vision, which he took very seriously and literally but kept to himself, made him feel separate and different from the other boys as he grew up, but otherwise he had a normal Sioux boyhood. The life Black Elk describes as a boy growing up prior to Little Big Horn sounds idyllic in a very communal and safe way – how the young men prepared themselves to be hunters and warriors, and the community by and large felt safe and at home in the mountains of what is now Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. When it became clear that the US Army was not going to keep the whites out, the Sioux didn’t feel obligated to stay in their assigned areas either, which ultimately led to Custer, Generals Crook and Terry being dispatched to discipline them and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. And then they discovered “the yellow metal that makes Wasichus crazy” in the Black Hills, which were supposed to belong to the Sioux. Treaties with the “Wasichus” – the Whites – were being made and regularly broken and the floodgates were open to more and more settlers moving into the region. When the story begins in the 1870s the Sioux were still living more or less the life they’d lived for centuries, but it was all about to end. It is also a powerful story of a Sioux medicine man, his spiritual values, his mystical view of the world, and of his role as an intermediary between the world of spirit and the world of the earth, of nature, of man. My Impressions: This is one of the most powerful and personal first person stories I’ve read from a Native American growing up and living in the northern plains of America during the final years of the Sioux nation. It’s a sad story about his unsuccessful efforts as a Sioux medicine man and shaman to forestall the demise of the Sioux Indian Nation. He subsequently participated in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show traveling in Europe, returned and also fought US soldiers during the slaughter at Wounded Knee. Then he tells stories about his boyhood growing up in his Sioux tribe, his participation as a teenager in the Battle of Little Big Horn, followed by the subsequent difficult and unpleasant period his tribe experienced trying to maintain their way of life while being pursued and and pressured by the US Army. It begins with him describing an incredibly detailed and powerful vision he had while he was a very sick and unconscious 9 year old boy – a vision that shaped the rest of his life. Summary in 5 Sentences: This book is Black Elk as an older Oglala Sioux medicine man (in his 60s) relating his life story to a trusted “Wasichu” (white man – John Neihardt) in the presence of a couple of his friends and contemporaries, with his son translating. After reading Empire and a great discussion I was inspired to finally read what Black Elk had to say. and the SEAL reading group I’m in had selected Native American history/culture as a genre for our next session. I have been carrying Black Elk Speaks around with me for nearly 50 years. Why this book: I just finished Empire of the Summer Moonabout the Comanches and it revived my long term interest in Native American culture. I read a much older paperback version than this newer publication, which appears to include photos and other additions my copy didn’t have.
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