through with the poles and we began building a sweat tipi for a medicine man by the name of Chips. He was the first man who made a sacred ornament for Crazy Horse to use in the war and probably this is where Crazy Horse was made bullet-proof and got his bullet-proof power.
When we got back to the people at Fort Robinson we told them that we saw some whites going toward the Black Hills. It was heard that the soldiers were up there to get the white and yellow metals in the hills. Everyone thought that something should be done about it and they must get together and decide on something. They called the Indians who stayed around the fort “Sticks around the Fort,” and the thought of them as sticking up for the whites. Crazy Horse was on the west and Sitting Bull was on the north and everyone thought they should get together and do something about the gold-diggers in the Black Hills. Red Cloud’s people said that the soldiers had come up there to drive the gold-diggers out, but the northern Indians did not believe it.
They had a sun dance here at Fort Robinson for the people’s health and for an abundance of meat. Some of them were dancing before they were going to war. I remember that only two men danced this sun dance because one of them was dancing on one leg and had lost one in the battle of the Hundred Slain. The other man had two good legs but he had lost one eye in the same battle. So the two men danced with three eyes and three legs.
We youngsters went down to the creek while they were sun dancing and we got some elm leaves and put them in a sack and we would fill our mouths with slippery elm leaves and we’d slash this stuff on the people when they were trying to look their best in the sun dance. We even would do this to some of the older people. Everyone was supposed to be teasing each other and everyone was happy that day. This was a kind of an endurance. Men should stand lots of endurance in the sun dance and we boys were there to test the endurance of their minds.
At the sun dances the children are taken, and the medicine men pierce their ears and if the parents think a lot of their children, they must give away a pony for each piercing. These ponies were given to the poor. Or a person who has performed a brave deed has the right to pierce a child’s ear the same as a medicine man has.
In the fall we broke camp and started toward the Little Big Horn. While we were at Fort Robinson we could see immigrants coming up to the Black Hills for gold and this was in the year of the treaty of 1876. I was there at the time of the powwow for the arrangement of the treaty of 1875. All I could remember is that in the middle of the circle of the tipis they put up a shade of canvas and underneath this were the white and Indian councilors and all around them were Indians on horseback. This was on the north side of White River, at the mouth of White Clay Creek. I was only a boy then, so this was all I saw of the making of the treaty. I wondered about the treaty so I asked my father what it was. He told me that the soldiers had wanted to lease the Black Hills. The general said to the Indians that if they did not lease the Black Hills to the Grandfather at Washington, the Black Hills would be just like snow held in the hand and melting away. In other words, they were going to take the Black Hills (Kha Sapa) away from us anyway.
Talking Points:
The Thunder-Beings Speak
Imagine a hot, clear summer day on the Great Plains. Without warning, the sky suddenly darkens, flashes of light strike the tops of the cottonwood trees, setting them ablaze. At the same time sheets of hail, the size of golf balls batter the ground. Fire and ice from the same angry storm. To the Sioux Indians these were Spirit forms, hard to understand yet very powerful. They were wakan. These Thunder-beings who controlled the fire and the ice had both the power to kill and the power to heal. According to Black Elk, from this water all healing herbs grow.
When people of the twenty-first century experience violent storms, one of their first concerns is the interruption of power and the many inconveniences of having to do without electricity for a time. The wonder and magnificence of nature is often lost to the complaint of a “missed” television program or a scramble for candles so often misplaced after the last storm.
The Indians of the Plains, however, lived in a world of nature and experienced its tremendous power all the time. Campbell notes, “just being there, you feel the wonder and you become aware of something larger than the human personification of the energies that exist.”
Black Elk’s experience was not one of peace and soliloquy. As a youth he lived in fear of the Thunder-beings. Continually he would leave his sacred space with a restlessness and passion and return to his people to fulfill the many charges presented him. He would hear the Thunder-beings calling him, but did not know what they wanted. His family watched him hide whenever the storms came, leading them to believe that he had dreamed of thunder.
In Lakota belief, a person who dreams of thunder must perform a ceremony acting out his heyoka dream. The dreamer must obey the command of the Thunder-beings. As part of the obligation, the heyoka ceremony has the dreamer deliberately act like a clown and do things backwards to make people laugh.
The medicine men of his village encouraged Black Elk to enact the horse dance rather than a heyoka ceremony. This performance demonstrated the first part of his great vision. It was after the horse dance that Black Elk said “After this ceremony was completed, it seemed that I was happy to see my people and they looked renewed and happy. I was now recognized as a medicine man at age seventeen. Everyone had respect for me. The fear that I had had now all disappeared and when the Thunder-beings came I was always glad to see them come, as they came as relatives.
The security of a sacred place can be comforting. It serves as a warm retreat from the often harsh realities of our world. It is important to remember, though, that one MUST venture out into the world again as Black Elk did, to meet today’s challenges. One could think of it as temporary oasis, giving us the opportunity for reflection and renewal as we make our life journey.
Throughout his interviews with John Neihardt, Black Elk would reference the symbols and metaphors given to him in his vision, some more powerful than others. We continue our journey with perhaps the most powerful and most referenced in all his teachings, the Sacred Hoop.
This teenage girl seems to have found her sacred place on the bank of the Little Bighorn River. Entitled “The voice of the Water Spirits” photographer Joseph K. Dixon captured a tranquil and reflective moment of her day. The photo is dated between 1908 and 1913 and is provided by the Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, Call Number Z3182.
Can’glegska Wakan
Draw your Sacred Hoop
Draw your Sacred Hoop
After you have selected your sacred place and become familiar with the peaceful reflection and solitude it affords, you are ready to follow the next footprint left by Black Elk. You are now asked to Draw Your Sacred Hoop. Keep in mind that each of the symbolic metaphors given to Black Elk in his vision is open to various interpretations and that of the Sacred Hoop is no exception. One might say there are several interpretations of his vision hoop. There is the Sacred Hoop of Containment and Protection which will be discussed in this section; the Sacred Hoop of Harmony which is highlighted in the Talking Points of the Little Bighorn account; and finally, the Sacred Hoop as the Circle of Winters detailed in the next chapter. Before exploring each of these interpretations, consider the following words of Black Elk, telling of the Sacred Hoop presented to him in the great vision:
The
