 John G.
Neihardt
Nebraska Poet
Black Elk Book
Other Neihardt books
The
Poet: John G. Neihardt, Prairie Poet Laureate of America
[Link
to more about John Neihardt]
John
G. Neihardt was author of Black Elk Speaks, the famous book
that would not die. Poet Laureate of Nebraska and Prairie Poet
Laureate of America, Neihardt was born January 8, 1881, and spent
his young years in Nebraska, where he became intimately associated
with the Sioux. He heard the old "long hairs" recall the trials and
tribulations which are so beautifully told in his poetry.
[Link
to more about John Neihardt]
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Black Elk Speaks is a
1932 autobiography of an Oglala Sioux medicine man as told to
John Neihardt.
In the summer of 1930, as part of his research into the Native
American perspective on the Ghost Dance movement, Neihardt
contacted an Oglala holy man named Black Elk, who had been
present as a young man at the 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn
and the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. As Neihardt tells the story,
Black Elk gave him the gift of his life's narrative, including
the visions he had had and some of the Oglala rituals he had
performed. The two men developed a close friendship. The book
Black Elk Speaks, grew from their conversations continuing in
the spring of 1931, and is now Neihardt's most familiar work.
The novel shows the growth and a social ethical analysis of
Native American tribes. |
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Read
Black Elk Speaks online
(PDF 1529KB) |
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"Finally, the old man began
talking about a vision that came to him in his youth. The sun was
near to setting when Black Elk said: 'There is so much
to teach you. What I know was given to me for men and it is
true and it is beautiful. Soon I shall be under the grass and
it will be lost. You were sent to save it. . .' His
purpose was to save his Great Vision for men." -- John G. Neihardt
(1881-1973)
www.neihardtcenter.org
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