From interviews conducted with the Oglala Lakota medicine man (and Catholic catechist) Black Elk in the 1930s, Neihardt constructs the story of a witness to the defeat of Custer at the Little Big Horn River and the Wounded Knee Massacre at Pine Ridge, plus horse visions, rifles and scalps, Crazy Horse and a trip to Paris.

“It was a happy summer and nothing was afraid, because in the Moon When the Ponies Shed word came from the Wasichus that there would be peace and that they would not use the road anymore and that all the soldiers would go away. The soldiers did go away and their towns were torn down; and in the Moon of Falling Leaves, they made a treaty with Red Cloud that said that our country would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow. You can see that it is not the grass and the water that have forgotten.”

Full Moon Winter Ale
Hop Head Red Ale

Black Elk tells about life in the last great days of the plains Indians and how that came to an end. Includes mystical dreams, etc. ( )

This book is the memoir of a Lakota Indian named Black Elk and the treatment of the Native Americans in the late 1800s and early 1900s by white settlers. This book was one of the most moving books I have ever read because of the fact that it is completely unbiased. Black Elk relayed his story to Neihardt as a very old man, a very long time after the occurrences in the book. He was not looking for fame or sympathy, but just to archive the history of his culture. He tells simply the facts and does not inflate anything, yet i find myself tearing up at certain points in the book. The book is also very spiritual, recalling all of Black Elks "visions." He describes exactly what it was he saw and does not try to explain the sense behind it, but just what he did in response. The book follows his life as he is brutally repressed and eventually relocated to a reservation. There Black Elk and his fellow Native Americans are stripped of their culture and beliefs and forced into assimilation. They are blacked in white schools, converted to Catholicism, and given work force jobs. No longer can Black Elk roam the land as he did and live off of nature. Neihardt manages to write the entire book just as Black Elk recalls it, simply and unchanged. This book is incredibly moving and a very important historical artifact in our country. ( )

One of the best books I've ever read and one of the few that I go back to and read over and over. It moves me again every time I read it. ( )

Black Elk was approximately 68 and most of his peers had died when he sat down with an epic poet and young translators and began telling his story. It includes glorifications of battles and buffalo hunts, the burdens of suffering caused and endured, and detailed revelations of a tribal visionary.