Black Elk Speaks (41 page)

Yellow Breast,
186
,
187
,
188

Yellow Shirt,
69
,
70
,
104

Yellowstone River,
103
,
104
, 104
n
7, 107
n
21,
141

Young American Horse,
203

Young Man Afraid of His Horses,
217
, 217
n
11

Young-Man-Afraid-of-Lakotas.
See
Royer, Daniel F.

Zurich, Switzerland,
xxvii

1
.
During the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cutting the hair, together with the change to Euro-American style clothing, was symbolic of Lakota men’s acceptance of the white men’s may of life. When boys attended school their braids mere shorn away, their hair was cut short, and they could no longer wear breech cloths and blankets. By the 1930s, only a few men refused to cut their hair. They mere called “long hairs,” a term that designated not merely their hairstyle but their orientation to traditional Lakota culture
.

2
.
Wicháša
‘holy man.’ The characterization of Black Elk as a “kind of a preacher” was probably intended to designate his role as a catechist in the Roman Catholic Church, not his identity as a traditional Lalcota holy man, but at that time Neihardt would not have understood this
.

3
. In Sixth Grandfather, 26–27,
I hypothesized that the interpreter was Emil Afraid of Hawk. That identification now appears to be an error. The interpreter was apparently Flying Hawk (1852–1931), who was a decade older than Black Elk. For Flying Hawk’s life story, see McCreight
, Firewater and Forked Tongues: A Sioux Chief Interprets U. S. History.

4
.
Neihardt wrote that it had been used by Black Elk for “a long while in the sun dances in which he has officiated as priest
” (Sixth Grandfather, 28).
The sacred or nament is a circle with triangular notches cut around the circumference. It was made from a rawhide parfleche (that is, a rectangular storage container); thefront is painted deep blue, while the back reveals part of the original painted design of the parfleche. A dark mottled eagle wing feather is suspended from the center, together with some shed buffalo hair wouen with thread to form a pendant
.

5
.
‘great holy.’

6
.
Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in Carlisle, Penn., a boarding school for Indian students founded in 1879. See Prucha, The Great Father, vol. 2, 694-700. Benjamin Black Elk attended the school from 1915–17 (Sixth
Grandfather, 23-24).

7
.
The complete transcript of the shorthand notes is published in sixth Grandfather
.

1
.
Neihardt uses the expression “inner world” only in this preface. He conceptualized Black Elk’s traditional religious beliefs and practices as an “entire system of knowledge that his vision represented,” knowledge that he kept locked inside himself after accepting the white men’s religion and joining the Catholic Church
(The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt, 28).

2
.
The exploration of “higher values” was a central theme of Neihardt’s life. See his Poetic
Values: Their Reality and Our Need of Them.

3
.
For Neihardt’s account of his first meeting with Black Elk, written soon afterward, see
Sixth Grandfather, 27–28.

4
.
See Hilda Neihardt, Black Elk and Flaming Rainbow: Personal Memories of the Lakota Holy Man and John Neihardt, for an intimate reminiscence of Neihardt’s relationship with Black Elk. For the 1931 interviews, see
Sixth Grandfather, 101–296.

5
.
The expression “outer world” occurs only once in the transcript of Neihardt’s conversations with Black Elk: “spirit (outer) world”(
Sixth Grandfather,
220). “Outer world” is Neihardt’s gloss; in the transcript, Black Elk uses “spirit world” twice and “other world” nine times. See Neihardt’s discussion of “outerfield,” the fundamental dimension beyond time and space, characterized by images, rather than words (
Poetic Values,
111). In his poem, “The Ghostly Brother,” based on a childhood dream, Neihardt is beckoned “Through the outer walls of sense” (
Collected Poems,
164)
.

6
.
Black Elk’s impaired vision, according to oral accounts, resulted from his practice as a medicine man. As a demonstration of his power, he would hide charges of gunpowder in a fire, which allowed him to cause seemingly spontaneous explosions; one time the powder exploded in his face (Sixth Grandfather, 13–14)
.

7
.
Neihardt likely did not know that Black Elk was literate in his native language. Not only had he read parts of the Bible in Dakota, but beginning in 1888, when he was traveling with Buffalo Bill���s Wild West show in England, he wrote letters in Lakota that were published in church newspapers. See
Sixth Grandfather, 8–10, 17–21.

8
.
For the transcript of a talk given by Benjamin Black Elk in 1969, see
H. Neihardt and Utrecht, Black Elk Lives, 3–22.

1
.
Neihardt’s expression “Spirit of the World” corresponds to Black Elk’s “Great Spirit” (
‘great holy’), the traditional Lakota conception of the totality of all that is sacred, powerful, and mysterious). The Lakotas also use this word to designate the Christian God. See Walker
, Lakota Belief and Ritual,
68–80
.

2
.
The thunder beings (
) are embodiments of the power of the West, manifested in the violence and destructiveness of storms of thunder and lightning. They are conceptualized as giant birds whose out stretched wings are black clouds and the flash of whose eyes is lightning. See Walker
, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 119–20, 155–57, 278–80.

3
.
The four directions (world quarters) are personified as winds, each designated by a symbolic complex of colors, animals or birds, and distinctive powers (see Walker
, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 124-27).
Two other directions, up and down, were recognized in addition to the four winds, making a total of six. Ritual actions, such as offering the pipe, include all six directions in order to call upon and bring together the powers of the universe
.

4
.
The first six paragraphs are Neihardt’s, expressing in his own words his sense of Black Elk’s mood and motivation for telling his life story
.

5
.
See
Sixth Grandfather, 283-85.
A longer version of this story as told by Black Elk is in Brown
, The Sacred Pipe, 3-9.
For other tellings of the story, see Lone Man (Teton from Standing Rock) in Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 63-67; Finger and Thomas Tyon (Oglalas) in Walker
, Lakota Belief and Ritual,
109-12, 148-50. The bringing of the pipe marks the beginnings of the Lakotas as a people. See DeMallie, “Kinship and Biology in Sioux Culture,” 127–30
.

6
. The phrase “the powers that are one Power” is Neihardt’s.

7
. “
Great Spirit, you have been always, and before you no one has been. There is no one to pray to but you.” Compare with a prayer of the
(adoption) ceremony: “Tuwá thókeca kephica
.
, niyéthokéya
” ‘No one else may be mentioned [There can be no other]. Great Spirit, you were the first to exist’ (Curtis
, The North American Indian,
vol. 3, 77, 151). These are Lakota ritual expressions that are addressed in turn to each of the powers called upon. Here, Neihardt’s wording gives a sense of monotheism. See discussion in
Sixth Grandfather, 91.