Black Elk Speaks (31 page)

29. Wounded Knee Battle: The Massacre

29. Wounded Knee Battle: The Massacre

The soldiers, again symbolized by six heads, and their Hotchkiss gun, continue to fire on the fleeing women and children in the gulch at Wounded Knee. Thirteen women and children, including one boy and a baby, are shown lying dead.

30. Black Elk Protected by the Sacred Bow

30. Black Elk Protected by the Sacred Bow

Black Elk is portrayed on horseback, wearing a painted and fringed Ghost Dance shirt, breechcloth, and beaded moccasins; he wears a headband and has a single spotted eagle feather in his hair. In his left hand he holds upright the sacred bow (a bow lance decorated with an eagle tail feather below the tip and at the bottom) that provides protection from a hail of soldiers’ bullets as he covers the retreat of a woman and her children, who are running for their lives. Standing Bear portrays the woman with a blanket wrapped tightly around her and secured with a belt, a baby on her back; her leggings and garters are carefully depicted. The soldiers are portrayed symbolically along the right edge by a row of six heads and twelve puffs of gunsmoke.

Raymond J. DeMallie

Black Elk Speaks is arguably the single most widely read book in the vast literature relating to North American Indians. John G. Neihardt’s poetic rendering of the life story of an Oglala Lakota holy man captivates the imagination of readers, drawing them into a meaning-charged world of symbols and otherness. We come away from our experience of Black Elk through Neihardt not with analytical understanding of the old Lakota religious life, but, as Neihardt wrote after his first meeting with Black Elk, with insights into the holy man’s “inner world, imperfectly revealed as by flashes.” That experience, in Neihardt’s words, is for us, as it was for him, “both strange and wonderful” (BES, xi).

The mystery of the intellectual and emotional bond that these two men recognized between one another, and that led to their creative collaboration, adds a very human dimension to the narrative. As Neihardt explained to Black Elk in a letter about the proposed book about his life, “I would use as much of your language in it as possible” (so, 20).
¹
Indeed, Neihardt was so successful in blending his own voice with Black Elk’s that they became a single voice, a literary device so convincing that Neihardt faded into the background, allowing readers the sensation that Black Elk was speaking to them directly, without an intermediary.

Having grown up hunting buffalo, witnessing Custer’s demise at the Little Big Horn, experiencing visions and living as a medicine man,
traveling with Buffalo Bill, and participating in the Ghost Dance and the aftermath of Wounded Knee, Black Elk’s life stretched back across the historical epoch that Neihardt celebrated in his epic poem, A Cycle of the West. Admittedly, when he first met Black Elk, Neihardt’s only intention was to gain a sense of what the Ghost Dance beliefs were like and how the ritual felt in order to infuse his Song qf the Messiah with an emotional authenticity. But in that first meeting in August 1930, Black Elk offered much more, a sharing of his vision, of the story of his life, and of his people. And Neihardt jumped at the opportunity.

From the beginning, Neihardt understood that the “very peculiar merging of consciousness” (
SG
, 40) that he experienced with Black Elk had a mystical basis. Black Elk told him on that first visit, Neihardt wrote, “that a spirit, which stood behind me, had forced me to come to him that I might learn a little from him” (
SG
, 27). Neihardt believed that his interest in “the things of the other world,” which Black Elk instantly intuited, provided the Lakota holy man with the opportunity to pass on the knowledge of things that were sacred in the old ways of his people. For more than a quarter of a century Black Elk had put aside those old ways and embraced Catholicism and the ways of the white people. He had served as a catechist and a missionary and was a staunch member of the Catholic Indian community. He had given up his traditional ceremonies and healing practices and had not shared with his children any of his old sacred knowledge. Although Black Elk’s commitmentto Catholicism would not waver, Neihardt understood that the failure to live up to the mandate of his vision was a heavy burden for the Lakota holy man. But suddenly, with Neihardt’s arrival, and his obvious desire to learn about the “other world,” Black Elk could transfer his burden to another man—a writer, who could preserve the sacred knowledge in a book. So it was arranged for Neihardt to return in the spring and set down in writing that which Black Elk wished to tell him.

When Neihardt returned in May 1931, with financial support from William Morrow, a New York publisher, his project was very clearly defined. As he wrote to Black Elk during the winter, “I would want
you to tell the story of your life beginning at the beginning and going straight through to Wounded Knee… this book would be not only the story of your life, but the story of the life of your people” (
SG
, 29). For his part, Black Elk was ready. He had enlisted the help of three friends—men older than he—who could tell with firsthand authority about events of which Black Elk could not speak from his own experience. He had obviously carefully thought through what he would tell Neihardt since he related his life story very nearly in chronological order, without the need to go back and fill in gaps.

But before the work could properly begin, it was necessary for Black Elk to formalize his relationship with Neihardt by adopting him as a relative
(SG,
31–38). Black Elk accepted Neihardt as a writer, a “word sender,” and clearly respected him for it, but the relationship they were establishing as Black Elk gave to Neihardt the sacred knowledge he had never shared with anyone before required establishing a bond of kinship. So, at the beginning of their work together, in the public context of a feast, Black Elk adopted Neihardt as a son and gave him the name Flaming Rainbow. The name reflected a striking image in his great vision, a rainbow door radiating multicolored flames through which Black Elk had to pass to gain the knowledge and gifts of the Six Grandfathers. Neihardt himself would be the conduit through which that knowledge would subsequently pass to the world at large. Also representing images from his vision, Black Elk named Enid Neihardt She Walks with Her Sacred Stick, while Hilda Neihardt was called Daybreak Star Woman. These were not casual names and the adoption ceremony was not an insignificant spectacle for the edification of non-Indian visitors. Rather, these new identities were central to the collaboration that would ever after link Black Elk to Neihardt, and their families to one another.

Throughout the interviews, as Black Elk spoke, Neihardt’s primary task was to clarify his meaning by questioning Ben Black Elk as he translated his father’s words. Frequent repetition was required to clear up ambiguities; only then did Enid Neihardt transcribe the sentences in her notebook. Her notes were recorded in Gregg shorthand,
except for proper names and Lakota words, which were written out in full to prevent confusion. The precision and neatness of her notes reveal that once a sentence was clarified and transcribed there was very little revision. The record reveals only a very few occasions when Neihardt asked substantive questions; the interviews were structured by Black Elk himself.

Neihardt was intimately familiar with the nineteenth-century historical record of conflicts between the whites and the Lakotas, and he had long acquaintance and amicable relationships with individuals among the Omaha, Crow, and Lakota peoples. He was less familiar with the ethnographic record of Plains Indian cultures, nor did he evince interest in cultural description for its own end. He was a storyteller and, as he wrote to Black Elk, “people like stories” (
SG
, 50).
Black Elk Speaks
is filled with cultural details but they are carefully selected to advance the story and to provide necessary context. The interview notes abound with additional details that Neihardt omitted in the interest of writing a book that would speak to a broad audience. His interest was universalistic, the identification of commonalities between Lakota culture and that of white America, both as a means of promoting understanding and of using Lakota spiritual and social values to critique modern America.

Central to the success of their collaboration was a shared sense of the significance of the dream or vision. Black Elk told Neihardt in detail about his vision experiences, most importantly, the great vision he had at the age of nine, when he lay unconscious for twelve days. It was that dream that set his life course and placed the burden on him to serve his people as an intercessor with the spirit world. In return, Neihardt told Black Elk about the dream he experienced at the age of eleven, when he lay in a fever. Repeated three times during the night, Neihardt felt himself hurtling through a vast emptiness at a dreadful speed, his arms stretched forward, a great voice driving him on. Neihardt interpreted the dream as a mandate for his life’s work, to choose a path with higher purpose, which finally settled into his vocation as a poet. Almost two decades later Neihardt returned to
the dream and transformed it into a poem, “The Ghostly Brother,” that conceptualized the cosmic force in the dream as a spiritual alter ego, a fate or guide: “I am you and you are I.” The poem expresses the tension between the two egos, the spiritual leading forward, urging the other to follow “through the outer walls of sense,” toward a higher reality, while the earthly fears the challenge and begs to stop and enjoy life’s worldly pleasures.
²

Black Elk found Neihardt’s dream perfectly comprehensible. It was, in his words (as interpreted by Ben), “a power vision.” Black Elk identified Neihardt’s unseen guide: “I think this was an Indian brother from the happy hunting grounds who is your guide.” For Black Elk, it was natural that one’s life work should be revealed in a dream; he said to Neihardt, “The work you were assigned was man thinker.” Moreover, Neihardt’s invisible guide and his vocation as a writer linked him directly to Black Elk. Before he met Neihardt, Black Elk confided, he would think about his vision and become sad because he wanted the world to know about his vision but was powerless to do so. “It seems that your ghostly brother has sent you here to do this for me”
(SG,
43).

Neihardt’s mission was clear: to preserve Black Elk’s vision and to share it with the world. When he returned home from his visit with Black Elk and the other old Lakota men he felt as though he was returning to the twentieth century. He had been lost, he wrote, “in the consciousness of those essentially primitive men, and it so happened that the whole mood of the experience was determined by one of them in whom the highest spiritual conceptions of his race have flowered in beauty and wisdom.” The beauty and wisdom of Lakota culture, as articulated by Black Elk, served as a stark counterpoint to “the dominant contemporary consciousness”
(SG,
49).

As he composed
Black Elk Speaks
, using Enid’s transcript of her shorthand notes as the basic source, Neihardt was concerned that the book be factual, but more importantly—as he wrote in his introduction to a paperback reprint forty years after the first edition was published—“to recreate in English the mood and manner of the old man’s narrative”
(
BES
, xxi). The task was to create a literary Black Elk real enough to be accepted by twentieth-century readers. The first-person voice obviated the problems of description and explanation that would have faced a third-person narrative. Readers would have to judge for themselves what Black Elk’s experiences, actions, and beliefs truly signified. Neihardt, as recorder, would not serve as an intermediary between Black Elk and the readers of the book.

The material, however, was challenging for general readers, for whom visions and spiritual intervention in the affairs of this world seemed both archaic and suspect. This became clear to Neihardt when the editors in New York proposed relegating the account of the great vision to an appendix, a suggestion that Neihardt adamantly rejected. The conflict exemplified how unprepared non-Indian readers could be to take Native American spirituality seriously. Neihardt won that battle, but he lost when it came to the title. He wanted to call the book “The Tree that Never Bloomed,” focusing on this central symbol of Black Elk’s vision and of his hope for the future of his people. In the end, Neihardt settled for Black Elk Speaks, a tactful compromise suggested by his wife, Mona
(SG,
53).

Neihardt’s literary Black Elk, as his character developed from boyhood to manhood, became a spiritual leader devoted to using prayer, sacred songs, and ceremonies to cure the sick and to heal his people. His visions placed a burdensome responsibility on him to use the powers given him for the benefit of the Lakotas, whose way of life and reason for living were both casualties of the Euroamerican conquest of the West. The metaphors of restoring the hoop of the nation and making the tree bloom summed up what Black Elk felt himself called to do, the responsibility that he had failed. And so the literary Black Elk delivers an elegy on Harney Peak, the feeble cry of a pitiful old man, defeated, but who still hopes that his people may have a future.