Hoop
Four more riders, one from each quarter, came forth and presented me with a hoop, and with that hoop I was to make a nation and under that we were to prosper. The circle represented the old people that represented a nation. The center of it represented the prosperity of the nation. I was to raise a nation either in prosperity or in difficulty. In presenting the sacred hoop to me, the spirit from the west said: “Behold this sacred hoop; it is the people you shall have.” You realize that in the sacred hoop we will multiply. You will notice that everything the Indian does is in a circle. Everything that they do is the power from the sacred hoop, but you see today that this house is not in a circle. It is a square. It is not the way we should live. The Great Spirit assigned us a certain religion and etc. The power won’t work in anything but circles. Everything is now too square. The sacred hoop is vanishing among the people. We get even tents that are square and live in them. Even the birds and their nests are round. You take the bird’s eggs and put them in a square nest and the mother bird just won’t stay there. We Indians are relative-like to the birds. Everything tries to be round—the world is round. We Indians have been put here to be like the wilds and we cooperate with them. Their eggs of generations are in the sacred hoop to hatch out. Now the white man has taken away our nest and put us in a box and here they ask us to hatch our children, but we cannot do it. We are vanishing in this box.
In his great vision, Black Elk saw the eventual breaking of his people’s hoop, and in his lament he tells its painful meaning. The story does not end here. The rediscovery of his dream would have us mend the hoop, starting with our own personal circle.
The Sacred Hoop of Containment and Protection
Joseph Campbell tells us, the circle can be thought as the psychological expression of the totality of one’s self. Simply stated, circles shut out the outside and hold in the inside.
When you are in your sacred place, the next step is to draw an imaginary circle that contains only those elements of your life that are of most concern to you and which are at least to some degree, under your control. This exercise accomplishes two things: first it delimits the issues you need to address and are most on your mind; and second, it blocks out those more distant issues that are beyond your control. For our personal journey, the concept of the circle is one in which you are asked to define the limits of your immediate concerns, both positive and negative.
Your sacred hoop then, is in effect you. It gives you a oneness, a whole being. The focus now becomes inward. The hoop’s containment gives you a feeling of control. By definition we are now able to see exactly what you must face. The issues shrink to fit inside and become more manageable and less overwhelming. It is through these concepts of “shrinkage” and “containment” that the elements of your life are reduced to their proper proportions.
This is no easy task. In the beginning your hoop will contain many issues beyond your control. Throughout the day we face issues ranging from our local arena to world events well beyond our locus of control. It is our nature to take on the problems of the world in an effort to do good. Drawing the hoop of containment does not mean that broader issues will be ignored. On the contrary, the exercise is meant to build a good base where one can construct inner strength and have a solid place to move out into the world again.
Joseph Campbell often referred to the power symbolized by the circle. It represents a totality, he explained, a unit with no beginning and no end. It is an ever-present thing, the center from which you have come and back to where you go. He quotes Carl Jung’s description, “the circle is the most powerful religious symbol, it is one of the great primeval images of mankind; in considering the circle, you are analyzing yourself.”
Jung believed that the totality or the content of your circle comprises all the issues you are aware of (consciousness), and a personal unconsciousness which he defines as chiefly those issues which at one time have been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed. It is the combination of the conscious and the personal unconscious that Jung refers to as “the self” and claims both exist within the circle you have drawn.
We continue our journey of exploration by looking inward, secure in the knowledge that we have the peace and protection of our sacred hoop. Black Elk and his people enjoyed this harmony in their last days of freedom on the Great Plains.
Meditative Reading
The Tiospaye at the Little Bighorn The Final Days of the Sacred Hoop
Black Elk gives the account leading up to the Tiospaye gathering and the Battle with Custer’s 7th Calvary at the Little Bighorn.
We broke camp and went to join Crazy Horse’s band on the Tongue River. Then I went up into the Black Hills alone and had another vision under a tree and found out that the duty that was to come to me was that I would probably save the Black Hills. It looked as though it was impossible, but I was anxious to perform my duty on earth.
I was anxious to see my cousin Crazy Horse but he wasn’t there. He must have been on a warpath against the Crows.
Black Elk Tells About the Custer Battle
It was late in the Spring of 1876 when we went to join the others camped at the Little Bighorn. We took our horses out on the prairie beyond to graze them. We had about ten thousand ponies—so many you couldn’t count them. So many tipis we couldn’t count them also. We were guarding our horses. The women were out hunting turnips and the men were out hunting also. We had guards all around. The boys and the old men were taking a bath in the Little Bighorn River, which was flowing pretty full from the June rise. I was so young yet and I wasn’t very dependable, but in a case like this some of the boys asked me to go swimming.
I knew then that something terrible was going to happen within a day. I thought about the bow and arrows the spirits had given me. I thought lots of things in a short time there that couldn’t be imagined.
At daybreak my father woke me up and told me to go with him to take the horses out to graze. A cousin of mine and I were getting ready to take several horses out to graze. Then as I started, my father told me to be careful and I ought to have one horse with a long rope on it, easy to catch, and we should keep our eyes on the camp and look around us always. He said, “If anything happens bring horses back to camp right away as soon as you can.” We took the horses out and herded them as the sun was coming out. We stood out there until the sun came up higher. We just let the horses go and I tied a long rope to one of them and turned them all loose. We went back to the camp. It was getting warm now and so the people were all swimming in the river. Some men went out hunting and women were out digging turnips and it was about eight or nine o’clock. We had no breakfast and had to go back to get it. Everyone took his horses to water.
I did not feel right—I had a funny feeling all this time, because I thought that in an hour or so something terrible might happen. The boys were all swimming and I did not go down because I did not feel very good. I made up my mind I would go swimming anyway, so I greased up my body. At the Hunkpapas I heard the crier saying: “They are charging, the chargers are coming. Where the tipi is they say the chargers are coming. (The tipi where they had put their dead before when they came down to the Greasy Grass.) Then the crier at the Oglalas announced it and then each village announced it one after the other. We heard the cry going from village to village.
Just about this time my cousin had taken the horses to water and they were then just coming from the water. I had a buckskin mare and got her. Everyone was catching their horses at this time. We were lucky to get our horses—most of the people’s horses were out grazing yet they were running after them.
My brother came up and took hold of his horse and told
