Nicholas Black Elk: Lakota Mystic and Servant of God

Show Notes :

Image Credit: "Nick Black Elk" by Jake.

Music Credit: *Special Thank You to Paul Spring for allowing us to use his song "Itasca" from the album Borderline EP (2014)!
Episode 8: Nicholas Black Elk, Lakota Mystic and Servant of God

Brief Chronology:
1863 - Black Elk born.
1865 - End of U.S. Civil War.
1866 - Battle of the Hundred Slain / the Fetterman Massacre, in which Black Elk's father is wounded.
1872 - Around this time, at about age 9, Black Elk experiences his great vision.
1876 - Battle of the Little Bighorn; Black Elk, about age 12, kills a soldier.
1877 - Crazy Horse killed.
1886 - 1889 - Travels to Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
1890 - Sitting Bull killed; Massacre at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29.
1892 - Black Elk marries Katie War Bonnet
1899 - Birth of son Benjamin Black Elk, who will become important for interpreting Nicholas Black Elk's legacy.
1904 - Conversion to Roman Catholicism; he is baptized Dec. 6, the Feast of St. Nicholas.
1906 - Marriage to Anna Brings White, mother to Lucy Looks Twice
1907 - Black Elk begins travelling as a catechist.
1930 - Interviews with John G. Neihardt which will become the basis of Black Elk Speaks, published in 1932.
1936 - Black Elk begins managing Duhamel Indian Pageant.
1945-46 - Interviews with Joseph Epes Brown which will become basis for The Sacred Pipe, published in 1953, after Black Elk has died.
1950 - Death of Nicholas Black Elk on Aug. 17, followed by a vivid display of the northern lights.

Summary:

In this episode we discuss a modern candidate for sainthood, Nicholas Black Elk (ca. 1863-1950). Black Elk was a Lakota Sioux medicine man whose journey took him from traditional Lakota religion and the Ghost Dance movement to Roman Catholicism.

He was probably born in 1863, at a time when his people, the Lakota, still lived independently hunting buffalo on the Northern Great Plains, in what is now the Dakotas and Montana. He relates the story of the first few decades of his life in Black Elk Speaks, a book written by and formed out of a series of conversations with a Nebraskan poet, John G. Neihardt in the early 1930s. Included in the book are his memories of Crazy Horse, the battle of Little Big Horn, meeting Queen Victoria as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, the Ghost Dance movement, and witnessing the tragic massacre of Lakota civilians at Wounded Knee. And that was only the first part of his long life.

Black Elk's life was full of prayer and intense religious questioning. He experienced visions from a young age and eventually became a medicine man. After marrying a Catholic, he eventually converted and became a catechist and missionary, travelling and speaking across the country. At the same time, he passed on Lakota traditions by sharing his life experiences and knowledge with Neihardt (Black Elk Speaks) and anthropologist Joseph Epes Brown (author of The Sacred Pipe), as well as performing traditional dances for tourists.

His legacy and claims about his personal religious beliefs remain controversial. Scholars continue to debate whether he continued to believe traditional Lakota religion alongside Christianity, was a sincere orthodox Catholic who rejected the traditional past, and how he reconciled different belief systems and chapters of his life.

Two clarifications/corrections to the episode - We checked again on the Two Roads chart and are still unclear on the exact story of its origins, but you can learn more about it in Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala by Steltenkamp. Also, the speech by Benjamin Black Ellk and separate comments by Benjamin Black Elk's nephew concerning the practice of Christianity alongside traditional religion were connected in the retelling in our conversation, but would best be understood (and parsed out) by reading/listening to them in context in the sources below, the documentary Walking the Good Red Road and the first chapter of Black Elk Lives.

Finally, a disclaimer: this episode covers some controversial episodes in American history as well as a controversial religious thinker. We hope you find this a useful addition to the conversation about Black Elk. Of course we always recommend going back to the sources - ad fontes - and forming your own judgment about this fascinating candidate for sainthood.

Link to the Documentary:

Walking the Good Red Road

Sources and Further Reading:

• Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux by John G. Neihardt (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press 1988).

• The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux by Joseph Epes Brown (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1953).
• Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala by Michael F. Steltekamp (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1993) - Written by a Jesuit priest, this book presents extensive material from Black Elk's daughter Lucy Looks Twice and other people who knew him concerning his Catholic faith.
• Black Elk Lives: Conversations with the Black Elk Family by Esther Black Elk DeSersa, Olivia Black Elk Poirier, Aaron DeSersa Jr., and Clifton DeSersa; edited by Hilda Neihardt and Lori Utrecht (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2000) - This book is composed of recollections and anecdotes from descendants of Benjamin Black Elk and contains the speech by Benjamin Black Elk brief referenced in the episode.
• Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). - A biography that takes a more skeptical stance towards Catholicism and Black Elk's orthodoxy, but provides a very readable and detailed narrative history of Black Elk's full life.
• Black Elk's Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism by Clyde Holler ( Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1995).
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (Holt, Rinehard and Winston, 1971)- This history of the 19th century wars that led to resettlement of many Native American tribes on reservations has chapters that provide useful background on the war for the Black Hills, the Ghost Dance religion, and Wounded Knee massacre.