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Nicholas Black Elk
Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic
By Michael F. Steltenkamp UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2009 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-8368-8
CHAPTER 1
Cultural Background
For many years, the only known photograph of Lakota spiritual leader Nicholas Black Elk was one that appeared in The Sacred Pipe (1953). Joseph Epes Brown, the book's author, took the photo graph two years before the holy-man's death in 1950. It showed an elderly patriarch, garbed in nineteenth-century Indian buckskin, holding the stem of a two-foot-long smoking pipe. With a short haircut and receding hairline, Black Elk reflectively stared into the camera. His was a visage that immediately told of one who had seen much suffering and no doubt had much to say about what he had witnessed. Brown's photograph stereotyped Black Elk as a wisdom keeper of very advanced age and as a grandfather figure to a twentieth-century reservation.
John Neihardt took many photographs when he interviewed Black Elk in 1931, but he allowed readers only to imagine the holy-man's appearance. No shots were included in his 1932 book, Black Elk Speaks, until a half century after its initial publication. Black Elk Speaks was subtitled a "life story," but it was actually a partial biography with embellished details. It told the story of a much younger man—who grew up in a tipi on the plains, who hunted buffalo and scalped enemies—than was pictured in Brown's photograph.
In not covering Black Elk's life after 1890, Neihardt did not report everything that the holyman said during his interview. Black Elk also discussed aspects of his people's history and culture. This context , and much more that he shared, is key to understanding the boy who became the venerated elder of Brown's well-known photograph.
The Sioux
By the mid-1800s, "Sioux" had been the popular term applied to Black Elk's people, but they called themselves Lakota, which was the preferred term as the twentieth century came to an end. These people made up an Indian culture popularly described as a buffalo-hunting, tipi-dwelling warrior society. In the twentieth century, motion pictures often portrayed the Lakota fighting the cavalry, attacking wagon trains, and being the scourge of settlers moving west. Contrasting with these images, Black Elk and his story—as told by Neihardt and Brown—put a human face on the Lakota people and, to some extent, remythologized their identity. Neihardt and Brown tapped the pulse of a person whose humanity came to life for readers.
Black Elk's western Lakota were related to other branches of their nation whose dialects and economies differed slightly. At the time of his birth in the 1860s, his people occupied territory that stretched from Minnesota to Montana, and included North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska. One set of relatives was the Dakota, who lived northeast of the Lakota. Another branch was the Nakota, who occupied land between these two groups. (In older collections, "Dakota" often is used, inaccurately, when identifying photographs of people from all of these divisions.)
Over time, and without negative connotation, the people all began referring to themselves by the generic name, Sioux. They also used the terms "Lakota," "Nakota," and "Dakota." These were names for their regional dialects and were associated with a word meaning "ally." Since explorers often first learned of tribal groups from enemies who fought them, the newcomers labeled these groups with the "foreign" names that their enemies bestowed. Only in the late twentieth century have Indian nations reclaimed the names that originally identified their people (e.g., just as the western "Sioux" prefer now to speak of themselves as "Lakota," the "Chippewa" call themselves "Anishnabé," the "Crow" are "Apsáalooke," and the "Navajo" are "Diné," etc.).
When referring to the settlers who encroached upon the Sioux, Neihardt introduced readers to a word he transcribed as "wasichu" (wah-she'-chew). This was the Lakota term long applied to white people, but it did not refer to color. Black Elk translated the word for Neihardt to mean simply that "they are many." The holy-man also said that the term formerly referred "to buffalo in very large numbers" (DeMallie 1984a, 151). Other etymologies make the word's origin difficult to ascertain—not unlike the origins of the Lakota themselves.
Origins
As with all Native peoples in North America, the Lakota genesis is shrouded in a distant past. One oral tradition tells of a subterranean existence, from which the people eventually emerged through Wind Cave in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Their leader sacrificed his life on their behalf by being transformed into a buffalo. Henceforward, this special four-legged creature played a central role in the Lakota's life.
Black Elk told Neihardt that all Indian nations came from an ocean to the south. According to the holy-man, one group, led by High Hollow Horn, went east. Another, led by Slow Buffalo, traveled to the west, and the group that eventually became the Lakota moved north. Contrary to what researchers have concluded, Black Elk believed "the Sioux were the first Indians" and that, originally, "everyone talked Sioux" (DeMallie 1984a, 333). Over time, he claimed, different languages developed after this exodus from the south.
Anthropologists have looked elsewhere for a Lakota origin. While it was once thought that the people's occupation of the plains was an ancient one, the consensus of scholars now points to a woodland beginning.
The Nation as a Whole
Woodland groups often referred to their affiliation with one another by the term "council fires," and Black Elk's people employed this same term. Representing an ethnic identity more than a political alliance, the phrase "Seven Council Fires" referred to four groups of Dakota—the Wahpekute (Shooters among Leaves), Mdewakantonwan (Spirit Lake People), Wahpetonwan (Dwellers among Leaves), and Sisitonwan (People of the Swamp); two Nakota groups—the Ihanktonwan (Campers at the End) and Ihanktonwanna (Little Campers at the End); and a seventh group, the Teton Lakota, who were Black Elk's people. The Seven Council Fires, however, was not an inflexible construct, since the Assiniboines (Cook with Stones) associated, relative-like, as a Nakota-speaking people. This three-part division—Dakota, Nakota, Lakota—describes a kind of national portrait of Black Elk's people that is not mentioned in the earliest accounts that simply distinguished between eastern and western Sioux.
Like the nation's grouping into council fires, the Lakota also consisted of seven groups, with Black Elk belonging to the Oglala (Scatter Their Own) division. Located in southwestern South Dakota, the Oglala reservation, Pine Ridge, is the second largest in the United States. It was officially created out of the Great Sioux Reservation in 1889, along with the Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Rosebud, and Lower Brule reservations. The Oglala's Lakota neighbors to the east on the Rosebud Reservation are the Sicangu peoples, who were formerly referred to in literature by their French name Brulé, meaning "burnt thigh people."
Also Lakota, the Hunkpapa (Entrance), Miniconju (Planters by the Water), and Oohenunpa (Two Kettles) peoples occupy reservations elsewhere. A sixth set of Lakota, the Sihasapa, is referred to in literature as the Black Feet, but this group should not be confused with the Blackfoot tribe of Montana and Alberta, Canada. The seventh group of Lakota is the Itazipacola. As with the Sicangu, the Itazipacola are often known by their French name, Sans Arc, which means "no bows." Each of these groups consists of smaller social units, or bands, which, in turn, include extended families.
Tradition and Innovation
Historically, Lakota lifeways fostered independence and creative self-expression that benefited the community. Thus, each person could make a special contribution to the nation's self-preservation. Repeatedly surfacing in Black Elk's life, however, is the hard fact that tradition to people in one era was considered innovation to those in an earlier period. This has been true for cultures everywhere, and the Lakota experience was no exception.
During their exodus from the woodlands to the plains—which ethnohistorians conclude took place in the early to mid-eighteenth century—the people confronted new challenges that required adaptation based on expedience instead of reliance on tradition alone (the best-selling 1979 novel Hanta Yo strove to tell this story and stirred as much interest as it did controversy when turned into a 1984 made-for-television movie). Especially when confronting a wholly different culture in the historic period, standards from the past were not always helpful. Consequently, innovative behavior was a necessity. However, camp police kept people in check by commanding strict obedience, sometimes brutally, when on the move. At other times, noncoercive leadership reinforced one's sense of independence.
While the stereotype is otherwise, the period before contact with settlers was not stress-free or timeless for Plains Indian cultures. Rather, these groups, which arose in the relatively recent past, faced many challenges (Lehmer 1977, 25–43). According to Black Elk, the quest for food was a constant in the world of his youth. Dogs were second to buffalo as a source of meat and also served as the people's traditional "beast of burden," carrying belongings from one campsite to the next. Even in less stressful times, the Lakota quest for food was a challenging one.
Eating took place twice a day, in the morning and evening. Black Elk once remarked, "I never heard anyone say it was time to eat at noon" (DeMallie 1984a, 386). When visiting another family, people would usually be fed there, and such sharing was the earmark of a virtuous host. The Lakota never presumed they would find sustenance, so prayers of gratitude always preceded eating. Joseph Epes Brown recounted watching Black Elk observe this custom at an unlikely diner in Denver. The holy-man's praying drew the respectful attention of everyone present.
Adaptation was necessary for survival, and this strategy of adjusting to one's circumstances is what people like Black Elk preserved. As the Lakota adapted to different circumstances in order to survive, their lifeways changed over time, not only in terms of shifting their home from the woodlands to the plains but also in terms of warrior traditions and dependence on dogs and later horses. Black Elk's life later revealed that Lakota theological discourse did the same.
Lakota Lifeways
The serious business of group survival was probably the origin of a warrior tradition that became a way of life in the 1700s as the nation gained a foothold on the plains. Black Elk admitted, "We did not fight for our lands" (DeMallie 1984a, 314). Rather, he said, "enemies" were people "whose language we did not understand" (friends of the Lakota—the Cheyenne and Arapaho—were an exception to this rule).
"Counting coup" on opponents became a normative expectation that all men of fighting age eagerly sought to meet. It consisted of touching an enemy in battle or after he had been slain. Shooting someone from a distance was honorable, but Black Elk told Neihardt that another Lakota should have the second honor of touching the fallen foe. Still another should do the scalping. Contrary to popular belief, archaeological evidence shows scalping to have been a custom in Native North America prior to European contact, although there has been advocacy for seeing scalping as a European import and not a tradition.
Several works have called attention to and reinforced the idea of the warrior lifestyle that historically defined the Lakota world and brought status to individuals. Royal B. Hassrick's seminal work describing Lakota culture, The Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society, is a rich ethnography that describes how the people lived. However, this book's title might leave readers with the false impression that these high-plains folk preferred militancy to living in peace. Another classic study, Warriors Without Weapons, argued on behalf of a debatable thesis: namely, since men were no longer able to conduct raids in the twentieth century as they had in the past, they lost a premier life pursuit that previously had brought them honor.
By stressing the people's traditional "militancy," these studies conveyed an impression that the Lakota were somehow genetically bellicose or prone to desiring warfare as a way of life. As a result, Black Elk's people were misrepresented, not just in popular culture but in academic works, as an inherently hostile nation. In reality, war exploits brought prestige to an individual but were part of a larger survival strategy. Overall, the warrior tradition was a preemptive lifestyle that arose for the purpose of self-preservation.
Neihardt and Brown purposely chose to de-emphasize this aspect of the culture. By doing so, they provided the compelling worldview of a people whose warmth and wisdom were far more transparent than their desire to fight. The writers' portrayal of the Lakota was quite different from the one-dimensional warrior stereotype that arose in the late nineteenth century.
Dogs, Horses, and the Origin of Warfare
While not historically accurate in every detail, Black Elk's folk history rightly showed that Lakota lifeways changed over time. Without elaboration from Neihardt, Black Elk associated the warpath with Indian peoples who originally migrated westward. He said that these people became numerous and quarrelsome, and he attributed warfare to his people's acquisition of horses from the Cheyenne. Horses contributed to key changes in his people's way of life.
Indian nations did not have horses in prehistoric times. The Spanish introduced them to the Southwest before Black Elk's people eventually acquired them. They replaced dogs—which Black Elk told Neihardt originated as wolf pups domesticated by a legendary figure known as Moves Walking—as the people's beast of burden. With lodge poles attached to their backs (a device known as the "travois"), horses could drag larger burdens. Far more powerful than the dog (sunka), the horse had unequalled speed and utility. It earned the name sunka-wakan. Wakan usually translates as "sacred," but implies mystery, awe, and wonder. By 1680, Lakota culture accommodated this "sacred dog" to such an extent that the people came to rely on it for hunting and transportation. "Wakan" was also added to the Lakota word for "water" (mni) when liquor was introduced to the people. It became "mni-wakan" or "sacred water" because it produced behaviors and visions that were out of the ordinary and difficult to explain (Steltenkamp 2005).
The Buffalo in Lakota Culture
Although horses were crucial to the Lakota for hunting, no animal they hunted was so key to their shifting way of life when they moved to the plains as the buffalo. Coming onto the plains introduced the Lakota to vast herds of bison, and Black Elk told Neihardt that the "Thunder-beings" (thunder and lightning) gave the "two-leggeds" (humans) the right to hunt "four-leggeds" (animals with four legs). A man named Red Thunder won a race with all the four-leggeds and received a bow and arrow with which his people could hunt. Had the outcome been different, buffalo would have had the right to hunt and eat people!
Black Elk said that Red Thunder performed his exploits at a time when the four-leggeds were not wild, so hunting was much easier. Red Thunder made a wooden arrow, and his first kill was a beaver. He had a vision that showed him an arrow with a stone point on it, so he applied flint to the arrow and with it killed a deer. Letting the sun dry the deer meat, he produced the first jerky (De-Mallie 1984a, 309).
Red Thunder's people then began hunting buffalo, and ever since that long-ago time, this creature and the Lakota have been inseparable. It is not surprising that when the term "vanishing American" came to be applied to all Native peoples at the end of the nineteenth century, the buffalo shared the same unwanted distinction. The animal's existence paralleled theirs.
The Sacred
Just as buffalo underscored the Lakota's entire way of life on the plains, so did the people's understanding of "the Sacred." Both coursed through every aspect of their existence. Throughout Black Elk material, the phrase "Wakan Tanka" appears in translation as "Great Spirit." Monotheism, or the belief in one all-powerful deity, is associated with its usage (the Algonquian phrase "Kitchi Manitou" similarly appears in literature in reference to beliefs of peoples of the Great Lakes).
Many people assume that the words Wakan Tanka are a traditional Lakota reference to an all-powerful creator figure, interchangeable with "god," "Great Spirit," or "the Creator." Ethno historians have argued that this monotheistic conception of deity arose in the historic period. Previously, however, when wakan (sacred, the mysterious) was combined with tanka (great), the phrase referred to the totality of the spirit world, its incomprehensibility, and its mysterious, wondrous power. Over time, however, Lakota prayers that were in English simply came to invoke the Great Spirit, which connoted monotheism. Black Elk's spirituality reflects this shift.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nicholas Black Elk by Michael F. Steltenkamp. Copyright © 2009 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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