About Black Elk-Neihardt Park
Black Elk-Neihardt Park in
Blair, Nebraska, is a city park named for Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota,
and John G. Neihardt, Nebraska's Poet Laureate. Neihardt is the author
of Black Elk Speaks, which he wrote after a series of interviews with
Black Elk in 1931 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where
Black Elk lived.
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More about Black Elk
>> More about John G. Neihardt
http://www.NeihardtCenter.org
The park features mosaics
illustrating the visions of Black Elk as interpreted by the late F. W.
"Bill" Thomsen, professor emeritus of art at Dana College.
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Prof. Thomsen became
acquainted with Dr. Neihardt in the 1970s, and it was Neihardt who
suggested that Thomsen illustrate scenes from Black Elk Speaks. The
pastels that Thomsen created were subsequently translated into the
mosaics in this park.
 The most prominent mosaic is on the Tower of the Four Winds. This
45-foot tower of Cor-Ten steel displays a colorful mosaic of
approximately 50,000 pieces. The mosaic illustrates a recurring vision
that Black Elk first had as a nine-year-old child.
In this vision, he said, he saw the universe as a hoop holding all
living things. The hoop was bisected from east to west by the black
road, the road of worldly difficulties, and from south to north by the
red road of spiritual understanding. A sacred tree, full of leaves,
blooms, and singing birds, grew where the roads cross, Black Elk said,
and "that place is holy."
As an adult Black Elk had this vision again at the time of the Ghost
Dance, shortly before Wounded Knee. "Then they led me to the center of
the circle," he said, "where once more I saw the holy tree all full of
leaves and blooming. But that was not all I saw. Against the tree there
was a man standing with arms held wide in front of him. . . . I could
not tell what people he came from. He was not a Wasichu [white man] and
he was not an Indian. His body was strong and good to see, and it was
painted red. . . .While I was staring hard at him, his body began to
change and became very beautiful with all colors of light, and around
there was light. He spoke like singing: 'My life is such that all
earthly beings and growing things belong to me. . . .'" (Quotations are
from Black Elk Speaks.)
Four smaller
mosaics on pedestals with Prof. Thomsen's interpretations of Black
Elk's descriptions of the four quarters of the world stand – in north,
east, south, and west positions -- along a concrete path in the shape
of a hoop. A cottonwood tree (cottonwoods were considered sacred by
the Lakota) grows near the center of this hoop.
The park was dedicated by the city of Blair as "Black Elk-Neihardt Park" in
1976, this country's bicentennial year, and the Tower of the Four Winds was
dedicated in 1987.
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