Preface to the 1932 Edition
The first time I went out to talk to Black Elk about the Ogalala Sioux, I found him sitting alone under a shelter of pine boughs
near his log cabin that stands on a barren hill about two miles west of Manderson Post Office.
I had learned that Black Elk was related to the great Chief Crazy Horse and had known him intimately; so, in company with
my son and an interpreter, I went to see him, expecting no more than the satisfaction of
exchanging a few words with one who had, not once but many times, "seen Shelley
plain." Nor did I feel certain of even so much; for, on the way, my interpreter said
that he had taken another writer to Black Elk that morning without success. "I can
see that you are a nice-looking woman," the old man had remarked, "and I can
feel that you are good; but I do not want to talk about such things."
Black Elk paid me no compliments, but he talked all that August
afternoon, save for frequent brooding silences when he sat hunched up, with folded elbows
on his knees, staring upon the ground with half blind eyes.
It was not of worldly matters that he spoke most, but of things that he
deemed holy and of "the darkness of men's eyes." Although my acquaintance with
the Indian consciousness had been fairly intimate for more than thirty years, the inner
world of Black Elk, imperfectly revealed as by flashes that day, was both strange and
wonderful to me.
Also, I was deeply impressed by the scope of the man's
life experience. In addition to having lived the common life of his
people in the good old times as well as in the tragic and heroic years of their final
defeat and degradation, from early youth he had lived in and for a world of higher values
than those of food and shelter, and his years had been one long, passionate devotion to
those values as he conceived them. As hunter, warrior, practicing holy man, and
indubitable seer, he seemed even then to represent the consciousness of the Plains Indian
more fully than any other I had ever known; and when I became well acquainted with his
inner world, I knew this to be true.
The following year, in company with my daughters, Enid
and Hilda, I returned to Black Elk's home for an extended visit, that
he might relate his life story to me in fulfillment of a duty that he felt incumbent upon
him. The nature of that duty as he conceived it will be apparent to readers who may
approach the book in no condescending mood as of a civilized person more or less curious
about the "savage" mind, but with the humble desire of one groping human being
to understand another and perhaps to learn a little more in a world where so very little
can be known. Such a reader should find much in Black Elk's consciousness for earnest
pondering, especially in view of the present state of affairs throughout the whole scale
of human values as our civilization has dealt with them.
But even those who seek merely to be entertained need not fear to listen
when Black Elk speaks. He has been a participating witness to various stirring events,
both in the physical and in the spiritual world, and he tells of these with a thoroughly
unself-conscious simplicity that makes for easy reading. If at times his insights and
poetic reaches approach sublimity, it will be granted that upon occasion his sense of
humor is sufficiently lively to keep him in close touch with his fellow men.
In his intimate every day family life Black Elk may
fairly be described as a saint in the deeper meaning of that term, as signifying a rare
form of genius. The members of his family and his friends all feel this, and the devotion
shown to him by those who know him best is striking. Though a profoundly melancholy man,
he is cheerful in all his human contacts and radiates an atmosphere of kindliness even
when he sits brooding with that look of heart-break in his face that has made at least one
white man love him. He longs for the time when he can enter the "Outer World,"
and yet during our extended visit with him and his friends, he was never slow to enter
into any sport that might make my daughters happier, and he could remember many a funny
story and good joke to liven the spirits of our party in our duller moments. He could
enter into a game of hoop-and-spear with the gusto of a care-free boy, and he would dance
half the night away with us under the stars to the booming of the drums and the strangely
beautiful songs that he knew in his youth.
When I first met Black Elk he was almost blind. Recently he has become
totally so, a fact of which he informed me quite casually and apparently without sense of
affliction. Is he not thus released from "the darkness of the eyes," and so a
little nearer to his visioned world of reality?
Black Elk is illiterate; but thoughtful readers will allow that he is
none the less an educated man in the fine sense of a term that sometimes seems to have
lost its vital meaning for us in this excessively progressive age. For how may an educated
man be described correctly, save by saying that in his consciousness racial experience has
been recapitulated to build a rich personality? And surely in Black Elk we find the
culture of his people in full flower.
I would suggest that this narrative should not only appeal to
average human beings with a normal interest in other human beings, but
that students of social theory, of essential religion, and of psychical research
especially, should find the book worthy of consideration. Incidentally, those who seek for
meaning in the visions, particularly the Great Vision, are likely
to be repaid for the effort.
I wish to express gratitude to my friends among the Ogalala Sioux for
helping me in many ways, and for their human kindness, although most of them will never
learn that I have done so. I am especially indebted to Benjamin,
son of Black Elk, for his painstaking and efficient service as my interpreter through many
days, and to my daughter, Enid, for the voluminous stenographic record
of the conversations out of which this book has been wrought as a labor of love.
Government officials were generous in helping me, and I have good reason to be grateful to
Secretary of the Interior, Ray Lyman Wilbur; Malcolm McDowell, Secretary of the Board of Indian
Commissioners; Flora Warren Seymour, a member of the
Board; and to B. G. Courtright, Field Agent in Charge at Pine Ridge.
JOHN G. NEIHARDT
Branson, Missouri