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Summary
Summary
Winner of the Society of American Historians' Francis Parkman Prize
Winner of the PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
Best Biography of 2016, True West magazine
Winner of the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award, Best Western Biography
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
Long-listed for the Cundill History Prize
One of the Best Books of 2016, The Boston Globe
The epic life story of the Native American holy man who has inspired millions around the world
Black Elk, the Native American holy man, is known to millions of readers around the world from his 1932 testimonial Black Elk Speaks . Adapted by the poet John G. Neihardt from a series of interviews with Black Elk and other elders at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Black Elk Speaks is one of the most widely read and admired works of American Indian literature. Cryptic and deeply personal, it has been read as a spiritual guide, a philosophical manifesto, and a text to be deconstructed--while the historical Black Elk has faded from view.
In this sweeping book, Joe Jackson provides the definitive biographical account of a figure whose dramatic life converged with some of the most momentous events in the history of the American West. Born in an era of rising violence between the Sioux, white settlers, and U.S. government troops, Black Elk killed his first man at the Little Bighorn, witnessed the death of his second cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance movement and shaken by the Massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was not a warrior, instead accepting the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that he struggled to understand. Although Black Elk embraced Catholicism in his later years, he continued to practice the old ways clandestinely and never refrained from seeking meaning in the visions that both haunted and inspired him.
In Black Elk , Jackson has crafted a true American epic, restoring to its subject the richness of his times and gorgeously portraying a life of heroism and tragedy, adaptation and endurance, in an era of permanent crisis on the Great Plains.
Author Notes
Joe Jackson is the author of one novel and six works of nonfiction, including, most recently, Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic (FSG, 2012). His book The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire was one of Time 's Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2008. He is the Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Professor of Creative Writing in the M.F.A. creative writing program at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Jackson (Atlantic Fever) panoramically renders a narrative as majestic as the American West in this fine account of the life of Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota holy man. With compassion and clarity, Jackson portrays Black Elk as a man haunted by his inability to make sense of the "Great Vision" that came to him as a child. Born in 1863 to a family of medicine men, he grew up during a time of declining fortunes for his people. Black Elk's life provides a window on major events in the post-Civil War West: Red Cloud's War, the battle of Little Bighorn, and the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Through those years, Black Elk sharpened his capacity for visions and cultivated his healing powers, always searching for ways to help the Oglala and even working with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. All of this is fascinating, but Jackson isn't content to recount a familiar story. He brilliantly frames it with an incisive discussion of the creation of John Neihardt's 1932 as-told-to book, Black Elk Speaks. Jackson digs into Native American culture and what it meant for Black Elk to be a holy man, especially in light of his 1904 conversion to Catholicism. He has produced a major contribution to Native American history. Maps & illus. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Jackson's (Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic, 2012) exhaustively researched biography expands on the widely read Black Elk Speaks (1932), based on the poet John Neihardt's interviews with the Sioux visionary and medicine man. Those extensive interviews ended with the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Jackson fills in the details of Black Elk's life until his death in 1950 by drawing on archives held at many sites, from battlefield museums to the Library of Congress. Born in 1863, Black Elk began hearing voices at age four and five years later experienced his great vision that warned him of the assault on their identity his people would experience with the white invasion. He traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show on its European tour in 1883, returned home to become his tribe's spiritual leader, conducting Ghost Dances, and then, surprisingly, converting to Catholicism in 1904. Jackson's enlightening account of this influential Sioux leader, whose life encompassed many landmark events of the tumultuous years of U.S. western expansion, leaves the reader in awe of Black Elk's struggle to help his people preserve their culture as their traditions, religion, and education were under constant and brutal attack.--Donovan, Deborah Copyright 2016 Booklist
Choice Review
Jackson (creative writing, Old Dominion Univ.) has written what might be the definitive biography of the American Indian icon. With vital prose, Jackson brings Black Elk to life. Here is a Lakota man who was present at Custer's Last Stand in 1876 and Wounded Knee in 1890, who danced before Queen Victoria at her Golden Jubilee in 1887, and who told his life story, published as Black Elk Speaks, in 1932. It has sold millions of copies and is still in print. Born in 1863, he died in 1950, having experienced the devastation of his people; however, his words led in part to their cultural resurgence. A great vision he received at age nine became Black Elk's guiding star. He reenacted its imagery in ritual, measured other faiths--including Christianity and the Ghost Dance--according to its spirit, and tried to fulfill its promise as an abiding vocation. Informed by written and oral sources, Jackson tells it all, focusing on Black Elk's struggle to express his native piety as a Catholic catechist, serving Jesuit priests who shaped his calling, then browbeat and disparaged him when his allegiance to his vision was revealed in print. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries. --Christopher T. Vecsey, Colgate University
Kirkus Review
Stirring, wide-ranging biography of the Sioux elder whose testimonials underlay one of the twentieth centurys most important documents on Native American culture.Born in the Powder River country in Wyoming, Hehaka Sapa, or Black Elk (1863-1950), was a Lakota Zelig who had been on hand at some of the key moments in the history of the Indian Wars. He was a confidant of Crazy Horse, a leader of the Sun Dance, a warrior at Wounded Knee, and in between a performer in Buffalo Bill Codys Wild West Showand even, while touring Europe, briefly a suspect in the infamous Jack the Ripper killings. Jackson (Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic, 2012, etc.) surveys a broad swath of world history to place the Lakota spiritual leader in that terribly eventful context, and he does excellent work in doing so, explaining the dynamics of medicine men in Sioux society (there were two classes of them, war prophets and healers) and the dynamics of an American popular culture that saw John Neihardts Black Elk Speaksnbsp;grow from a memoir of modest sales to a kind of Bible of the New Age movement, which would envelop everything related to Black Elk Speaks in a warm and fuzzy nimbus. One of the best moments in a book marked by many is Jacksons in-passing examination of the role of the American media in fueling the Indian Wars; another is his examination of the mystery of Black Elks conversion to Catholicism, having long been an advocate of traditional Lakota ways. Along the course of his narrative, the author provides a parallel biography of Neihardt, Black Elks chronicler, who felt great affection for and attachment to his interlocutor even as various players in Indian country tried to drive a wedge between the two. Of much literary and historical merit and a fine addition to the shelves of anyone interested in part of Americas unhappy past. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
When John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux was published in 1932, it was scarcely noticed by readers. When republished in 1962, its spiritualism spoke to the emerging counterculture, thus becoming one of the most influential American Indian works of the 20th century. Jackson (The Thief at the End of the World) endeavors to extricate the historical Black Elk from the mythology surrounding his legacy. Black Elk (1863-1950) lived during the most turbulent time in Oglala Lakota history. He fought in the Battle of Little Big Horn, witnessed the death of his cousin Crazy Horse, traveled throughout Europe in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, saw the terrible slaughter at Wounded Knee, and was ultimately forced onto a reservation with his tribe. Although a Lakota spiritual leader, he converted to Catholicism. Black Elk's life as legend emerged as his words were translated by his son for Neihardt, who wrote the story he wanted to write by prioritizing certain events and minimizing others, most notably Black Elk's religion. VERDICT This fascinating biography should be read alongside Black Elk Speaks as it contextualizes and reframes that earlier work. [See Prepub Alert, 5/23/16.]-John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Dramatis Personae | p. xi |
| Maps | p. xix |
| Prologue: "A Sort, of a Preacher" | p. 3 |
| Part I If You're Not Good, the Wasichus Will Get You | |
| 1 Chosen | p. 21 |
| 2 A Casualty of the Hundred Slain | p. 36 |
| 3 The Great Vision | p. 49 |
| 4 Resurrection | p. 63 |
| 5 The Black Hills | p. 77 |
| 6 "It Is War" | p. 90 |
| 7 When the Wasichus Come | p. 100 |
| Part II Childhood's End | |
| 8 The Burning Road | p. 123 |
| 9 Killing Crazy Horse | p. 137 |
| 10 Grandmothers Land | p. 159 |
| 11 The Fear | p. 173 |
| 12 Dances with Thunder | p. 182 |
| Part III The Messiah Will Come Again | |
| 13 The Land of Darkness | p. 193 |
| 14 The Making of a Medicine Man | p. 206 |
| 15 The "Show Man" | p. 222 |
| 16 The Entrance to Hell | p. 244 |
| 17 La Belle Époque | p. 267 |
| 18 The Messiah Will Come Again | p. 279 |
| 19 Dances with Ghosts | p. 295 |
| 20 Wounded Knee | p. 316 |
| 21 "There Will Be a Better Day to Die" | p. 334 |
| Part IV "What Is an Indian?" | |
| 22 The Underground | p. 347 |
| 23 Black Robe Days | p. 361 |
| 24 Vanishing Americans | p. 386 |
| 25 Black Elk Speaks | p. 408 |
| 26 Defenders of the Faith | p. 428 |
| 27 Disciples | p. 441 |
| Epilogue: Besieged | p. 467 |
| Time Line | p. 487 |
| Notes | p. 499 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 565 |
| Index | p. 569 |