Black Elk Speaks By John G. Neihardt

Black Elk was a holy man of the Oglala band of the Lakota Sioux nation. Black Elk interpreted his life as a holy man as "the story of a mighty vision" (BES, p. 2). As a child, Black Elk was blessed with a great vision from the other world. In receiving his great vision, Black Elk received a great power, a "power to make over" (BES, p. 201), a power to make things better for sick and suffering individuals and nations. He did not know it at the time, but this vision would be the blueprint of his life. It would guide him through times when he doubted his importance to his people. He had other visions, but they all tied into the great vision he experienced as a child. Black Elk made incredible

In his story “The Lakota Way; Joseph Marshall III adequately convinces the reader to persevere through a series of stories that allows the reader to develop a personal connection with characters. Marshall achieves this by informing the reader and using formal diction. This allows his readers to experience how perseverance can have a positive impact on one’s life. Marshall teaches us that Perseverance represents a quality in human beings that allows us to be steadfast despite the difficulty. In the folk tale “The Story of the Giant,” perseverance is abundant; Marshall utilizes the skill of teaching to persuade his audience to persevere through the story. Marshall‘s unique way of writing allows the reader to take lessons from a story and influence them to use it in their own lives. From lya the giant terrorizing people to Indians having to leave their land because of the government to Marshall’s grandfather’s stories of hardship, Marshall shows his audience how the Native Americans have always had it rough but more importantly how they persevered.

At the beginning of Black Elk Speaks, Black Elk and John Neihardt smoke the peace pipe then Black Elk begins his story. When Black Elk was still pretty young he and his tribe were involved in the Hundred slain war, and Black Elk also begins to hear strange voices. Later on Black Elk falls very ill, then two warriors come from the sky and bring Black Elk to the Flaming rainbow tepee, while he was there his six grandfathers gave him six very special gifts. After Black Elk got the gifts he was taught the horse dance, when Black Elk returned from his vision he went to see his cousin Crazy horse, later on Crazy Horse would be murdered by being stabbed in the back by a soldier. By this time most of the indians were forced to live on the reservations but one band of Lakotas escaped from the reservation and traveled north to Canada where Sitting Bull’s band was. The winters in Canada were too harsh for the Sioux so they reluctantly moved back to the reservation where they were given hardly anything. With Black Elk’s people losing hope he teaches them the dances he learned in his visions. When Black Elk learns of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show he decides to go with him, after a few months doing shows in America Black Elk went to England. When the Lakotas were camped on Wounded Knee Creek, the wasichus came and murdered everyone in the camp including the women and children. After the battle the remaining Lakota surrendered they went to the reservation and the flowering tree dies. The

The Omaha Chief Big Elk commented on the effect of the white migration to the West across the Overland Trails while visiting Washington D.C. He stated eloquently, “there is a coming flood which will soon reach us, and I advise you to prepare for it.” An estimated 500,000 people made the journey West to California and the Willamette Valley between the years 1840 – 1870. However, much like the first rains in a wet season, benefits were found in the first storm of white emigrants heading west. Native people were able to cooperate with white emigrants and benefit from trading with them. But the storms continued, emigrants as plentiful as rain drops came through the Indian lands and eventually, the prophecy of a great flood Chief Big Elk spoke of came true. Overtime, whites used up the limited resources of the plains tribes, depended on one another instead of Indians for help, and used force rather than compromise to clear the way for the expansion of the West.

The Black Elk realized in having the power to cure people as few other spiritual leaders could. Black Elk, being a little afraid, always influenced his friends into fighting believing and thinking always about his vision, which seemed reality to him. All his life he was getting more strength after losing someone close to him, this was a sign of the flow of powers to him from the spiritual world. Going through sorrow and despair, Indians had to stand up for themselves. Indians were proudly keeping on fighting the Wasichu, many times left with two horses and wounded.

“The Way of a Cherokee” by Foxxy was the essay I read to form this response Essay. Foxxy helps us imagine the time she lived in Montana with her grandparents. Where her grandfather told stories to her and her sister, Sierra, while they sat at his feet dreaming of being Cherokee warriors. Sierra and Foxxy wanted to see everything their grandpa was telling them, so they would go out on adventures. On the way home from one of the adventures Foxxy’s foot got stuck in the bog, her sister then ran to get her grandfather to save the day. Foxxy and Sierra think very highly of their grandfather and they believe he is the best. After he passed, the smallest things would jolt her memory of all the tales and adventures they had. There are many examples that identify my personal connections and help me relate to Foxxy and her grandfathers relationship, such as, living with my grandparents, my grandpa telling my siblings and I stories, and being adventurous with my sister.

Black Elk Speaks, a personal narrative, has the features of many different genres. The different genres that I noticed were in the book were, autobiography, testimonial, tribal history, and elegy. Black Elk Speaks is divided into 25 chapters, which portray the early life of Black Elk. The author tells us that Black Elk was a healer and a great holy man. He was said to have this mystical vision since he was young. As a tribal history, it shows the change of the Sioux nation from pre-reservation to reservation culture, including their partaking in the ghost dance, the Battle of Little Big Horn, and Wounded Knee. Black Elk Speaks propositions testament to the price in human grief that the Sioux had to pay for the United States expanding westward. It grieves his cultural misplacement and the age of being innocent and being free.

Chief Spotted Elk gained many new members after 200 people left Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa band. They were afraid that more police officers would arrive and detain them. Then, Spotted Elk, his band, and a handful of Hunkpapa left the Indian Reservation on the Cheyenne River. They fled to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, under the control of Red Cloud, to obtain shelter from the repercussions they believed they faced.

Though today, the Blackfoot territory is defined by reserve/reservation boundaries and divided by the United States-Canadian border, their homeland, Nitawahsinnanni (“our land”), continues to be defined by topographical features using their language (The Blackfoot Gallery Committee, 2013, 12). This traditional homeland spans from the North Saskatchewan River (Ponokasisahta, the Elk River) as far south as the Yellowstone River, Montana (Otahkoitahtayi) and from the Rocky Mountains as far East as the “Great Sand Hills

In the essay “Cree Poetic Discourse”, the author Neal McLeod addresses an intellectual problem that the western academic writing approach harms the indigenous Cree narratives. According to McLeod, the Cree narrative process, which involves poetic thinking, embraces new possibilities and keeps changing (9). This evolution process not only depends on various occasions of speaking but also depends on different storytellers and audiences who absorb stories, thus allowing Cree poetic discourse to possess dynamic feature (McLeod 9). Such dynamic narrative approach compresses space, like Neal McLeod, said, “Like the colors and shapes in the sky, like the folds and contours of water and lakes. (14) ” In order to fully

Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt is a story told for readers that take them on an adventure to knowing and caring about Black Elk himself and his tribe of his people. Neihardt talked about the spiritual visions of Black Elk that preceded sacred ceremonial dances, such as the Heyoka Ceremony, which followed Black Elk’s Dog Vision. Neihardt discussed the feelings and emotions that Black Elk felt from the visions he was experiencing; the sorrow that overwhelmed him as he witnessed the loss of loved ones and the conflict that he continually suffered while taking on such an essential duty for his tribe. Black Elk recognized that his people and their culture were starting to dwindle away. Neihardt expressed Black Elk's passion towards this situation by creating a vivid picture of the conflict that the

The Light In The Forest, a novel by Conrad Richter, depicts the struggles of a young boy named True Son, or John Cameron Butler, who has been raised by Indians but must go back to his home with the “whites.” The story takes place in Western Ohio and Pennsylvania in the year of 1764 where the relationship between the Pennsylvanians and Indians is not great. Throughout the story, True Son learns the differences between the Indians and Whites, and how each group views the other. Knowing the views between the two groups, True Son things about trying to figure out which group he really identifies as and belongs to, which is one of the conflicts in the story. Through all the troubles that True Son encounter, the theme of the story is the true identity

Native Americans are known for living in harmony with the land, animals, and other people in the world. In “The Education on Little Tree”, Forrest Carter illustrates the Cherokee respect and love for nature through the experiences of a young boy. The Education of Little Tree is a story of a boy who was orphaned and then adopted by his Cherokee grandmother and half-Cherokee grandfather in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee during the Great Depression. Little Tree is shown how to respect nature in the Cherokee Way, taking only what is needed and leaving the rest for nature to run its course. The author vividly describes how the Cherokee live with the land, and had a respect for and a love of nature.

Black Elk is a Native American medicine elder of the Ogalala Sioux nation. North American indigenous people see Mother Earth as a figure of completeness and symbolize it with a medicine wheel.

On the morning of December 29, 1890, many Sioux Indians (estimated at above two hundred) died at the hands of the United States Army near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Indians were followers of the Ghost Dance religion, devised by Wovoka, a Paiute prophet, as a spiritual outlet for Indian repression by whites. The United States Army set out to intercept this group of Native Americans because they performed the controversial Ghost Dance. Both whites’ and the Sioux’s misunderstanding of an originally peaceful Indian religion culminated in the Battle of Wounded Knee. This essay first shows how the Ghost Dance came about, its later adaptation by the Sioux, and