Black Elk (1863-1950)

 

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

October 5, 2023

 

 

My friend, I am going to tell the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it….

It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit….

Now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people’s heart with flowers and singing birds, and now it is withered; and of a people’s dream that died in bloody snow.

But if the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet; for such things are of the spirit…

 

—Black Elk Speaks by Black Elk, transcribed and edited by John G. Neihardt, pp. 1-2

*

 

Black Elk (Heháka Sápa) was born on December 1, 1863 near the Little Powder River in the Montana Territory. He was a holy man of the Oglala Lakota people. He was second cousin of Crazy Horse, fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn, participated in the Ghost Dance movement, survived the Wounded Knee Massacre and toured Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. He is best known for the account of his life he gave to John G. Neihardt, which was first published in 1932, and remains in print to this day. 

At the age of nine, Black Elk got a fever, and remained lying as if dead for twelve days. While absent from this world, he had a great vision. Here’s a brief excerpt:

 

All the universe was silent, listening; and then the great black stallion raised his voice and sang. The song he sang was this:

 

“My horses, prancing they are coming.

My horses, neighing they are coming;

Prancing, they are coming.

All over the universe they come.

They will dance; may you behold them.

                                                             (4 times)

A horse nation, may you behold them. 

May you behold them.”

                                                              (4 times)

 

His voice was not loud, but it went all over the universe and filled it. There was nothing that did not hear, and it was more beautiful than anything can be. It was so beautiful that nothing anywhere could keep from dancing. The maidens danced, and all the circled horses. The leaves on the trees, the grasses on the hills and in the valleys, the waters in the creeks and in the rivers and the lakes, the four-legged and the two-legged and the wings of the air—all danced together to the music of the stallion’s song.

And when I looked down upon my people yonder, the cloud passed over, blessing them with friendly rain, and stood in the east with a flaming rainbow over it.

Then all the horses went singing back to their places beyond the summit of the fourth ascent, and all things sang along with them as they walked.

And a Voice said: “All over the universe they have finished a day of happiness.” And looking down I saw that the whole wide circle of the day was beautiful and green, with all fruits growing and all things kind and happy.

And a Voice said: “Behold this day, for it is yours to make. Now you shall stand upon the center of the earth to see, for there they are taking you.”

I was still on my bay horse, and once more I felt the riders of the west, the north, the east, the south, behind me in formation, as before, and we were going east. I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rocks and forests on them, and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heavens. Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world.* And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.  And I saw that it was holy.

 

*Black Elk said the mountain he stood upon in his vision was Harney Peak in the Black Hills.” But anywhere is the center of the world,” he added.

 

—Black Elk Speaks by Black Elk, transcribed and edited by John G. Neihardt, pp. 41-43

*

 In his vision six grandfathers who were “old like hills, like stars” blessed him and told him that he must save his people. He said: “I knew that these were not old men, but the Powers of the World.”

As a nine-year-old boy, he was unable to tell his people about his vision. By the time he was 17, his tribe re-enacted much of his vision. This was a very important event in Black Elk’s life. As an old man, he was heart-broken by what he had lived through and what had happened to his people. He was sad that he had been unable to make real the vision of peace and harmony that had been granted to him. At the end of his life he was a practicing Catholic. He also continued to perform the sacred rites of the Lakota people.

In 1947, Joseph Epes Brown met Black Elk. Concerned that his sacred tradition not be lost, Black Elk gave him an account of the seven sacred rites of the Oglala Sioux. In 1953,  Brown published The Sacred Pipe. It is a treasure trove for indigenous peoples and for the rest of us, whose ancestors were surely indigenous at some point. John Trudell used to say: “We all come from tribes.”

Black Elk died in 1950. His vision and his wisdom live on.

*

 

Kim Stafford was Oregon’s Poet Laureate from 2018-2020.

 

All My Relations

 

I want to thank all my relations

for this chance to be on Earth

in her time of flourishing; to thank

the First People of this place, the

the Multnomah people, the Clackamas,

Molalla, Tualatin, and Chinook, to honor

their sovereignty in long and continuing

relation, still teaching us how we might

be here together; to thank my mother and father,

moon and sun, for setting me forth before

their own passing on; to thank my grandmother

who listened to me so eloquently I learned

to listen to my own heart and mind, to find

stories and songs there; to thank my family

and friends, and all citizens and travelers

who study and work for deeper kinship

in this place, with one another, and with

all creatures, one Earth, visible, palpable,

fragile, intricate, resonant, in need of our

better stories. I want to thank you

who have gathered to receive what I have

carried here—in hope that something

I have may meet something you need,

so all our relations may be strengthened

for the life we live together.

 

—from Singer Come from Afar by Kim Stafford

*

 

Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022. She said about her work:

 

“I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to all the sources that I am: to all past and future ancestors, to my home country, to all places that I touch down on and that are myself, to all voices, all women, all of my tribe, all people, all earth, and beyond that to all beginnings and endings.”

 

My House is the Red Earth

 

My house is the red earth; it could be the center of the world. I’ve heard New York, Paris, or Tokyo called the center of the world, but I say it is magnificently humble. You could drive by and miss it. Radio waves can obscure it. Words cannot construct it, for there are some sounds left to sacred wordless form. For instance, that fool crow, picking through trash near the corral, understands the center of the world as greasy strips of fat. Just ask him. He doesn’t have to say that the earth has turned scarlet through fierce belief, after centuries of heartbreak and laughter—he perches on the blue bowl of the sky, and laughs.

 

—from Secrets from the Center of the World by Joy Harjo

*

 

John Trudell (1946-2015) was a member of the Santee Dakota tribe.

 

Grandfathers Whispering

 

Grandfathers whispering

In the wind

Rejoice at the life

You are a part of

Natural energy

Bound to natural laws

You will survive this

Temporary madness imposed upon you

Natural life is longer

Than oppressors illusionary insanity

Spirits experience human deeds

But need not end

This is just one place of changes

 

Spirit life is forever if you want

The universe is your home

You can survive here

Do not let them kill you

Keep your spirit strong

For distant stars and distant drums

Are the memories of spirit infancy

Children of earth let the spirit live

So you can grow in your place

                                    In the universe

 

—from Lines from a Mined Mind by John Trudell

*

 

Gary Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975.

 

MOTHER EARTH: HER WHALES

 

An owl winks in the shadows

A lizard lifts on tiptoes, breathing hard

Young male sparrow stretches up his neck

                     big head, watching—

 

The grasses are working in the sun. Turn it green.

Turn it sweet. That we may eat.

Grow our meat.

 

Brazil says “sovereign use of Natural Resources”

Thirty thousand kinds of unknown plants.

The living actual people of the jungle

             sold and tortured—

And a robot in a suit who peddles a delusion called “Brazil”

             can speak for them?

 

             The whales turn and glisten, plunge

                     and sound and rise again,

             Hanging over subtly darkening deeps

             Flowing like breathing planets

                   in the sparkling whorls of

                           living light—

 

And Japan quibbles for words on

             what kind of whales they can kill?

A once-great Buddhist nation

             dribbles methyl mercury

             like gonorrhea

                            in the sea.

 

Père David’s Deer, the Elaphure,

Lived in the tule marshes of the Yellow River

Two thousand years ago—and lost its home to rice—

The forests of Lo-yang were logged and all the silt &

Sand flowed down, and gone, by 1200 AD—

 

Wild Geese hatched out in Siberia

                    head south over basins of the Yang, the Huang,

                    what we call “China”

On flyways they have used a million years.

Ah China, where are the tigers, the wild boars,

                    the monkeys,

                        like the snows of yesteryear

Gone in a mist, a flash, and the dry hard ground

Is parking space for fifty thousand trucks.

IS man most precious of all things?

—then let us love him, and his brothers, all those

Fading living beings—

 

North America, Turtle Island, taken by invaders

             who wage war around the world.

May ants, may abalone, otters, wolves and elk

Rise! and pull away their giving

             from the robot nations.

 

Solidarity. The People.

Standing Tree People!

Flying Bird People!

Swimming Sea People!

Four-legged, two legged, people!

 

How can the head-heavy power-hungry politic scientist

Government         two-world         Capitalist-Imperialist

Third-world          Communist        paper-shuffling male

               non-farmer         jet-set        bureaucrats

Speak for the green of the leaf? Speak for the soil?

 

(Ah Margaret Mead…do you sometimes dream of Samoa?)

 

The robots argue how to parcel out our Mother Earth

To last a little longer

                      like vultures flapping

Belching, gurgling,

                       near a dying Doe.

 

“In yonder field a slain knight lies—

We’ll fly to him and eat his eyes

                       with a down

          derry derry derry down down.”

 

             An owl winks in the shadow

             A lizard lifts on tiptoe

                          breathing hard

             The whales turn and glisten

                           plunge and

             Sound, and rise again

             Flowing like breathing planets

 

             In the sparkling whorls

 

             Of living light.

                                                  Stockholm, Summer Solstice 40072

 

——from Turtle Island by Gary Snyder

*

 

In his old age, Black Elk saw no contradiction between his traditional beliefs and those of Christianity:

 

We have been told by the white men, or at least by those who are Christian, that God sent to men His son, who would restore order and peace upon the earth; and we have been told that Jesus the Christ was crucified, but that he shall come again at the Last Judgment, the end of this world or cycle. This I understand and know that it is true, but the white men should know that for the red people too, it was the will of Wakan-Tanka, the Great Spirit, that an animal turn itself into a two-legged person in order to bring the most holy pipe to His people; and we too were taught that this White Buffalo Cow Woman who brought our sacred pipe will appear again at the end of this “world,” a coming which we Indians know is now not very far off.

Many people call it a “peace pipe,” yet now there is no peace on earth or even between neighbors, and I have been told that it has been a long time since there has been peace in the world. There is much talk of peace among the Christians, yet this is just talk. Perhaps it may be, and this is my prayer that, through our sacred pipe, and through this book in which I shall explain what our pipe really is, peace may come to those peoples who can understand, an understanding which must be of the heart and not of the head alone. Then they will realize that we Indians know the One true God, and that we pray to him continually.

I have wished to make this book through no other desire than to help my people in understanding the greatness and truth of our own tradition, and also to help in bringing peace upon the earth, not only among men, but within men and between the whole of creation.

We should understand well that all things are the works of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four-legged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as He intends.

 

—from Black Elk’s Foreword to The Sacred Pipe, recorded and edited by Joseph Epes Brown