Black Elk

Black Elk was never the tired, defeated old Lakota fabricated by poet John Neihardt for a bleak story of the vanishing Native American. Black Elk was from a warrior society devoid of self pity. He was shrewd and resilient. Before age 30 he had fought bluecoats at Little Big Horn and at Wounded Knee; he had lived in nations of the Lakota, America, Canada and Europe. For his Lakotas he preserved a grand vision from the center of the earth and he healed them as a pejuta wicasa.In 1904 Black Elk was baptized. He stopped his calling as pejuta wicasa. As catechist he counseled Lakotas on Christianity. But he was alloying a faith that included his native religion. In the 1930s John Neihardt exploited him for the poet’s dismal epic of despair. Yet interest created by Neihardt’s popular work has resurrected Black Elk’s great vision and illuminated his accommodation as a true wakan wicasa (holy man) of both Christianity and his native Lakota religion. Black Elk was active until his death in 1950 at age 87.