Sometimes it is difficult to come up with someone I want to salute. Last Sunday I got an e-mail because of a quote on that Sunday Posting. John wrote: "Glad to see you quoted Black Elk this a.m. He's one of the most fascinating figures in Native American culture in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. He's all the more interesting for being an Oglala. What all that man saw...!!!
Anyhow, we need to remember that he lived until 1950 (and was born in 1863, during the Lincoln administration). You and I were both very much around during his last years. Black Elk's son Nicholas commented on his father's work (and followed in his footsteps), and several of Black Elk's grandchildren have been interviewed about their grandfather.
The Neihardt book from the 30s, based on interviews with Black Elk is wonderful, but a little questionable as to accuracy. However, the later scholarly edition of Black Elk Speaks by DeMallie is very revealing. If you don't have it, it's available on Amazon, and I suggest hard copy, because it's easier to read than the Kindle version.
The two Steltenkamp books about Black Elk and his son Nicholas Black Elk are equally revealing, if somewhat controversial as possibly revisionist (I don't see them that way...).
But then you probably already knew lots of that, if not all of it.
Black Elk is one of my favorite figures among Native Americans...
Well, that was enough (even though I was only 4 when he passed he was my contemporary which is a requirement for a Sunday Salute.) I decided that I would do a little research and found him worthy (very worth) of a Sunday Salute.
The Wikipedia article states:
Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer. All things belong to you — the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air and all green things that live. You have set the powers of the four quarters to cross each other. The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross; and where they cross, the place is holy. Day in and day out, forever, you are the life of things.Therefore, I am sending a voice, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, forgetting nothing you have made, the stars of the universe and the grasses of the earth.
Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka , and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men
The Great Spirit is everywhere; he hears whatever is in our minds and our hearts, and it is not necessary to speak to Him in a loud voice.
The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.
Perhaps you have noticed that even in the slightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in different ways.
More from WikiQuotes here.
The Wikipedia article states:
Black Elk was born in December 1863 along the Little Powder River (thought to be in the present-day state of Wyoming). According to the Lakota way of measuring time, (referred to as Winter counts) Black Elk was born "the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed on Tongue River".
When Black Elk was nine years old, he was suddenly taken ill and left prone and unresponsive for several days. During this time he had a great vision in which he was visited by the Thunder Beings (Wakinyan), and taken to the Grandfathers — spiritual representatives of the six sacred directions: west, east, north, south, above, and below. These "...spirits were represented as kind and loving, full of years and wisdom, like revered human grandfathers."When he was seventeen, Black Elk told a medicine man, Black Road, about the vision in detail. Black Road and the other medicine men of the village were "astonished by the greatness of the vision"
Black Elk had learned many things in his vision to help heal his people. He had come from a line long of medicine men and healers in his family; his father was a medicine man as were his paternal uncles. Late in his life as an elder, he related to John Neihardt the vision that occurred to him in which among other things he saw a great tree that symbolized the life of the earth and all people. Neihardt recorded all of it in minute detail, and consequently it is preserved in various books today.
In his vision, Black Elk is taken to the center of the earth, and to the central mountain of the world. What mythologist Joseph Campbell explained as "theaxis mundi, the central point, the pole around which all revolves...the point where stillness and movement are together..." Black Elk was residing at the axis of the six sacred directions. Campbell viewed Black Elk's statement as key to understanding myth and symbols.
As Black Elk related:
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and 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.
Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer. All things belong to you — the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air and all green things that live. You have set the powers of the four quarters to cross each other. The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross; and where they cross, the place is holy. Day in and day out, forever, you are the life of things.Therefore, I am sending a voice, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, forgetting nothing you have made, the stars of the universe and the grasses of the earth.
Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka , and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men
The Great Spirit is everywhere; he hears whatever is in our minds and our hearts, and it is not necessary to speak to Him in a loud voice.
The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.
Perhaps you have noticed that even in the slightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in different ways.
More from WikiQuotes here.
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment