Background
In the summer of 1930, as part of his research into the Native American perspective on the Ghost Dance movement, the poet and writer John Neihardt, already the Nebraska Poet Laureate, received permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to go to the Pine Ridge Reservation with his two daughters to meet an Oglala holy man and shaman named Black Elk. At age 13, Black Elk had been part of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and he survived the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.
As Neihardt recounts, Black Elk gave him the gift of his life's narrative. He told of his visions, including one in which he saw himself as a "sixth grandfather", the spiritual representative of the earth and of mankind. Black Elk also shared some of the Oglala rituals which he had performed as a healer. The two men developed a close friendship, and Black Elk adopted Neihardt and his two daughters, giving each of them Lakota names. Niehardt developed the book Black Elk Speaks from their conversations, which continued through the spring of 1931. It has become Neihardt's most well-known work.
Read more about this topic: Black Elk Speaks
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