Native American Biography

Black Elk

Seattle

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.”

Chief Seattle

“I am a savage and do not understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffalos on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train.

I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.”

Chief Seattle

• Name: Si’ahl or Sealth • Speech in 1854• Spoke: Lushotseed• Translated: Duwamish• Written: English in

1880s

Black Elk

• Born 1863 in Wyoming• Oglala Lakota (Sioux)• Little Big Horn (Custer’s

Last Stand - 1876)• England – Buffalo Bill’s

Wild West Show (1887)• Wounded Knee (1890)• Meets John Niehardt• Dies 1950

Black Elk

• Black Elk Speaks (1931-32)– Niehardt interview– Black Elk’s son translates– Niehardt’s daughters transcribe– Niehardt finalizes document

Black Elk Speaks

• Vision at age 9 (chapter 3)• Conflicts with whites (ch. 4-9)• Little Big Horn (ch. 9)• Death of Crazy Horse (ch. 11)• Becomes healer/shaman (ch. 13-18)• Buffalo Bill (ch. 19-20)• Ghost Dance (ch. 21-22)

Black Elk Speaks

• Death of Sitting Bull (ch. 23)• Wounded Knee (ch. 24)• Regret that vision unfulfilled (ch. 25)

• Why this structure?

Black Elk Speaks

• Autobiography• Spiritual narrative• Quest narrative• Ethnographic document (tribal history)• Elegy

• Niehardt - poet

Black Elk Speaks

• Told at distance of 40 years

• Black Elk converts to Catholicism (1904)• Symbolism of vision his own?

Vision

• Meets 6 grandfathers– Given power of healer– Must carry on for sake of nation– Nation will meet trouble

• Sacred symbols used– 4 colors, directions, virgins– Hoop

• Has power to end drought

Vision

• Nation will suffer• Apocalyptic

• Vision result of looking backward?

Author’s postscript

• Present day (1932)• Black Elk wishes to go to mountain top (place

of thunder and rain)

• Mourns that vision unfulfilled

• It rains