soldiers kill the great warrior Crazy Horse, whose loss is a grave one for the Sioux. At the same time, Black Elk's vision perplexes him because circumstances do not seem to allow him to fulfill it. Government annexed more and more Indian territory and established Indian agencies and reservations. Black Elk's narrative continues to recount the increasing dislocation of the Sioux as the U.S.
The dislocation and loss of culture that the Sioux suffered as a consequence of such events as the discovery of gold in Montana and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad erupts in the Battle of Little Bighorn, recorded in Chapter 9. From this vision, Black Elk gains a sense of himself as different from others in his band in ways that are both privileged and unsettling.Ĭhapters 4 through 9 chart increasing tension between the Sioux and white Americans, as settlement and commercial enterprise expand westward into Indian territory. Highly iconographic and symbolic, Black Elk's early vision depicts his journey to a cloud world in the sky where six grandfathers give him sacred objects and empower him to maintain his people's sacred hoop. Chapter 3, the longest and most complicated chapter of the book, describes the vision that Black Elk was granted when he was nine years old. Chapters 1 and 2 are preliminary to the description of the great vision in Chapter 3 they convey Black Elk's confidence in Neihardt and record the first few years of Black Elk's childhood, including the first time he heard voices at age five. In these two pieces, Neihardt describes the circumstances of his conversation with Black Elk. Neihardt frames Black Elk Speaks with his Preface and Author's Postscript, which, though modest, remind readers of an editing presence. As an elegy, it mourns the passing of an age of innocence and freedom for the American Indian and his current cultural displacement. Black Elk Speaks offers testimony to the price in human suffering that the Sioux paid for the westward expansion of the United States. As a tribal history, it records the transition of the Sioux nation from pre-reservation to reservation culture, including their participation in the Battle of Little Bighorn, the ghost dance, and the massacre at Wounded Knee. As an autobiography, the narrative traces Black Elk's development as a healer and holy man empowered by a mystical vision granted to him when he was young. Black Elk Speaks is divided into 25 chapters, which depict Black Elk's early life. However, Neihardt's editing and his daughter's transcription of Black Elk's words, as well as Black Elk's son's original spoken translation, raise questions about the narrative's authenticity.
Black Elk Speaks, a personal narrative, has the characteristics of several genres: autobiography, testimonial, tribal history, and elegy.
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