But Neihardt and Black Elk ended their story at Wounded Knee when Black Elk was just in his 20s. The first half of Jackson’s book is an elaborate reworking of Black Elk Speaks, a kind of twice-told tale of Black Elk and his people. Paul, but Jackson follows Black Elk’s story deep into history’s archives and the oral histories and Lakota memories of those who knew him. There are digressions on Jack the Ripper and speculations on the Epistles of St. He provides context for the events Black Elk Speaks describes, things neither man could know: machinations at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, plans of generals and Jesuits, the constant coming of white settlers and the unavoidable tumult of American modernity. Jackson goes back over Neihardt’s story, filling in the pieces that Neihardt and Black Elk left out. New Age seekers found the book again in 1960s, and Black Elk Speaks became a classroom staple for a generation of students and a touchstone for spiritually minded readers. Neihardt’s elegy for Native American life came out in 1932, sold a few copies and sunk out of print. When he sat with Neihardt in the early 1930s, the vision seemed to offer hope not only for the Sioux people, but also for all humanity. He carried that vision through his long life. In that vision, young Black Elk had been taken to meet the Six Grandfathers and to see enacted a version of the Sioux cosmology-a vision of a unified universe. Those big events provide a kind of spine to the story, although the long account of Black Elk’s remarkable religious vision gives the book its heart. Black Elk took part in the Ghost Dance revivals of the 1880s, knew of Sitting Bull’s murder, and witnessed the massacre of his people at Wounded Knee in December 1890. Neihardt returned the next spring with his stenographer daughter and with her help (and the help of Black Elk’s English-speaking son and several of Black Elk’s elderly friends) took down the old man’s stories.īlack Elk recounted his childhood in the 1860s, told of his travels with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and described General George Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn. In the summer of 1930, Neihardt traveled to the Pine Ridge Reservation to meet the Sioux holy man. Those of us of a certain age cut our hippie teeth on Nebraska poet John G. His remarkably researched and beautifully told Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary takes us step by step through the details of the seer’s long life. That won’t be true for long, if writer Joe Jackson has his way. Harney, who had murdered a slave girl and killed Indians was hardly a sterling figure, but the governor suspected that “very few people know the history of either Harney or Black Elk.” It would confuse people, and for no very good reason. The name change was going to cost money, he said. Harney off maps of the Dakota Badlands and replaced him with the Lakota healer and holy man. The agency stripped the Civil War General William S. Board on Geographic Names rechristened South Dakota’s highest mountain Black Elk Peak. Maps, original illustrations by Standing Bear, and a set of appendixes rounds out the edition.Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jacksonįarrar, Straus and Giroux, 624 pp. Neihardt provide background on this landmark work along with pieces by Vine Deloria Jr., Raymond J. Deloria and annotations of Black Elk's story by renowned Lakota scholar Raymond J. This complete edition features a new introduction by historian Philip J. Neihardt understood and conveyed Black Elk's experiences in this powerful and inspirational message for all humankind. Neihardt in 1930 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and asked Neihardt to share his story with the world. Whether appreciated as the poignant tale of a Lakota life, as a history of a Native nation, or as an enduring spiritual testament, Black Elk Speaks is unforgettable.īlack Elk met the distinguished poet, writer, and critic John G. Neihardt, have made this book a classic that crosses multiple genres. Black Elk's searing visions of the unity of humanity and Earth, conveyed by John G. Black Elk Speaks, the story of the Oglala Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) and his people during momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century, offers readers much more than a precious glimpse of a vanished time.
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