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“Black Elk Speaks” as told to John G. Neihardt

Black Elk Speaks, considered by many to be one of the spiritual classics of the 20th Century, tells the story of a remarkable Oglala Sioux medicine man and a great visionary.  In addition to being possessed of spiritual gifts, Black Elk was a warrior, and was a witness to some of the most crucial moments in the unfolding saga of the nineteenth century American West.

Black Elk was present at the battle of Little Bighorn, where General George Armstrong Custer met his end.  Black Elk was a distant cousin to Crazy Horse, one of the most famous of the Sioux chiefs, and was present at Crazy Horse’s murder.  He participated in the Ghost Dance -- the dance believed by its Sioux adherents to have holy power, power to regain the mountains and prairies from the white settlers who were steadily pushing them out.  Black Elk was also present at the last battle of the Indian Wars, at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890.

Poet John G. Neihardt once said that his meeting with Black Elk was the most memorable experience of his life.  In 1930, while working on the concluding poem of his Cycle of the West, Neihardt had gone to the Pine Ridge Reservation hoping to find “some old medicine man who had been active in the Messiah Movement and who might be induced to talk with me about the deeper spiritual significance of the matter.”  Black Elk recognized Neihardt as one who had been sent to him to learn what “was given to me for men.”  The next summer, in a long series of talks, Black Elk imparted his own life story and the story of the Oglala Sioux during the tragic decades of the Custer battle, the Ghost Dance, and the Wounded Knee massacre.  These stories became Black Elk Speaks.

Black Elk Speaks, originally published in 1932, is venerated by many as an American spiritual classic, that offers not only a historical record but an invaluable, eloquent and profound vision of the unity of all creation, a vision more and more needed each passing season.