Black Elk Speaks (47 page)

26
. The kill dance, usually called the victory dance (wakté-gli ‘return from killing’) was performed by men who returned victorious from war; in it, they enacted the brave deeds they had performed in battle. The scalp dance (iwákichipi’dancefor one’s oum’) was generally performed by women, who danced holding poles to which were affixed scalps or body parts taken by their husbands or brothers from slain enemies. See Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 363–69
.

27
. Black Elk told Neihardt that a man blackened his face to indicate that he had scalped or killed an enemy (Sixth Grandfather, 211). Also see Densmore,
Teton Sioux Music
, 359. In his old age, Black Elk reinterpreted this custom from a Christian perspective, telling Joseph Brown, “By going on the warpath, we know that we have done something bad, and we wish to hide our faces from Wakan-Tanka” (The Sacred Pipe, g2n. 4)
.

28
. This paragraph is Neihardt’s. Responding to the failure of the 1875 Allison Commission to obtain the surrender of the Black Hills, the commissioner of indian affairs sent word through the Indian agents that the Lakotas and Cheyennes must return to their agencies by January 31,1876, or they would be considered hostile (Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 250-51; Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 216)
.

29
.
Pteh
cala st
pi wi ‘dark red calves month
.’

30
.
wi‘sore eye smoon.’

31
.
, a personal song sung in time of extreme danger
.

32
. The army planned a winter campaign against the Lakotas and Cheyennes who failed to come to the agencies. Brig. Gen. George Crook led an expedition of some nine hundred men up the Bozeman Trail from Fort Fetterman. On March 16 his scouts saw two Indians near Powder River and Crook sent Col. Joseph J. Reynolds with some three hundred men to follow them. The next day Reynolds found and attacked a camp of some one hundred lodges that he understood to have been the camp of Crazy Horse, but that was apparently a camp of Cheyennes with a small group of visiting Oglalas. Reynolds burned the tipis but his failure to press forward after his initial success cost him a court martial. See Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 254–55; Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 217; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 249–51; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:937–46. In the transcript, Black Elk does not mention this battle; Neihardt provided the information given here
.

*
Colonel Reynolds with six companies of cavalry attacked Crazy Horse’s village as stated in the early morning of March 16,1876.
³²

33
. This paragraph is also Neihardt’s. The poetic phrase “we heard enough to make us paint our faces black” actually inverts the relationship between black face paint and warfare; Lakota men painted their faces black to signify victory, not to signify that they were going to war
.

*
Long Hair, General Custer.
⁵

*
Colonel Dodge with 400 men and 75 wagons from Fort Laramie escorted a geological expedition into the Hills that spring and remained until October.
¹⁰

*
Cheyennes and Arapahoes.

†
The Bozeman Trail.
¹⁷

1
. For the life of Spotted Tail, see Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk
.

2
. In the transcript, Black Elk says the pistol was given to him by his sister (
Sixth Grandfather,
170)
.

3
. Again, Black Elk’s people were at this time in northwestern Nebraska. This attack must have taken place on the road between Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, and the gold mining camps in the Black Hills. Continual Indian attacks were reported near the Hat Creek (Warbonnet Creek) station in May 1876 (Spring, The Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage and Express Routes, 144)
.

a
. The
Bozeman
Trail, closed by the Treaty of 1868.
³

4
. This was Little Big Man, the Oglala who held Crazy Horse’s arms when he was killed (Sixth Grandfather, 170)
.

5
. Jack Red Cloud (1862–1928). In 1903, Red Cloud formally passed on his position as chief to his son Jack (Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 137)
.

6
. héchetu yeló! Neihardt added the names of the various chiefs present
.

7
. Neihardt provided this description of the Sun Dance; Black Elk does not talk about the ceremony in the interview notes. For Black Elk’s account of the Sun Dance (
wachfpí looking-at-sun dance’), see Brown, The Sacred Pipe, 67–100. Other basic sources on the Sun Dance include Curtis, The North American Indian, vol. 3, 89–99; Deloria,“The Sun Dance of the Oglala Sioux,” 354–413 (transcription and translation of the account written in Lakota by George Sword); Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 84–151; Dorsey, “A Study of Siouan Cults,” 450–64 (including a translation of the account written in Lakota by George Bus hotter); Walker, “The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota,” 55–121
.

8
.
.

9
. Historically, it was essential for an individual to have pierced ears in order to be considered fully Lakota (see Rocky Bear in Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 191–93.)

10
. Small, pointed wooden pegs are inserted into pairs of slits made in the dancer’s flesh; then the rawhide ropes are looped around them
.

11
.
This is a folk etymology for the Lakota word for baby or small child, wakh
or
.

12
. Both Black Elk and Standing Bear told Neihardt about the pranks played by boys during the Sun Dance
(Sixth Grandfather, 160,173–74).
Bushotter described a boys’ game played during the Sun Dance in which they threw loads of chewed elm leaves into the faces of boys belonging to other bands. He also described the game of throwing sharp grass and the making of pop guns. See Bushotter
, “Lakota Texts,” nos. 134, 157, 174.

13
. In the transcript, Black Elk does not mention Crazy Horse as the leader
.

14
. In the transcript, Black Elk is addressed simply as “Nephew” (Sixth Grandfather, 174). Kinship terms are the usual form of address in Lakota culture, but they are not modified to indicate age
.