Life
Black Elk said that during his life, he had several visions in which he learned things that would help his people. In his "great vision," at the age of nine, he said he met the spirit that guided the universe and saw a great tree that symbolized the life of the earth and of the Indian people. He did not speak of this to anyone until he was much older, but his family apparently understood he was clairvoyant after his supposed "illness".
Black Elk was involved in several battles with the U.S. cavalry. He participated, at about the age of twelve, in the Battle of Little Big Horn of 1876, and was injured in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.
In 1887, Black Elk traveled to England with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, an unpleasant experience he described in chapter 20 of Black Elk Speaks. On May 11, 1887, the troop put on a command performance for Queen Victoria, whom they called "Grandmother England." He also described being in the crowd at her Golden Jubilee. He and Red Shirt officiated Surrounded By the Enemy's funeral in London. The interment was at Brompton Cemetery.
Black Elk married his first wife, Katie War Bonnet, in 1892. She became a Catholic, and all three of their children were baptized as Catholic. After her death in 1903, he too was baptized, taking the name Nicholas Black Elk and serving as a catechist. He continued to serve as a spiritual leader among his people, seeing no contradiction in embracing what he found valid in both his tribal traditions concerning Wakan Tanka and those of Christianity. He remarried in 1905 to Anna Brings White, a widow with two daughters. Together they had three more children and remained married until she died in 1941.
Toward the end of his life, Black Elk revealed the story of his life, and a number of sacred Sioux rituals to John Neihardt and Joseph Epes Brown for publication, and his accounts have won wide interest and acclaim. He died August 19, 1950 at the age of 87.
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“I am heartily tired of this life of bondage, responsibility, and toil. I wish it was at an end.... We are both physically very healthy.... Our tempers are cheerful. We are social and popular. But it is one of our greatest comforts that the pledge not to take a second term relieves us from considering it. That was a lucky thing. It is a reform—or rather a precedent for a reform, which will be valuable.”
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