“Black Elk Speaks:
My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish;
and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it;
for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when
they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and shall
live that story, to be grass upon the hills.
It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds
sharing it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green
things; for these are the children of one mother and their father is one
spirit.
This, then, is not the tale of a great hunter or of a great warrior, or of a
great traveler, although I have made much meat in my time and fought
for my people both as boy and man, and have gone far and seen strange
lands and men. So also have many others done, and better than I.
These things I shall remember by the way, and often they may seem to be
the very tale itself, as when I was living them in happiness and sorrow.
But now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the
story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy
tree that should have flourished in a people’s heart with flowers and
singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people’s dream that
died in bloody snow.
But if the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet;
for such things are of the spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes
that men get lost.
So I know that it is a good thing I am going to do; and because no good
thing can be done by any man alone, I will first make an offering and send
a voice to the Spirit of the World, that it may help me to be true.
See, I fill this sacred pipe with the bark of the red willow; but before we
smoke it, you must see how it is made and what it means.
These four ribbons hanging here on the stem are the four quarters of the
universe. The black one is for the west where the thunder beings live to
send us rain; the white one for the north, whence comes the great
white cleansing wind; the red one for the east, whence springs the light
and where the morning star lives to give men wisdom; the yellow for
the south, whence comes the summer and the power to grow.
But these four spirits are only one Spirit after all, and this eagle
feather here is for that One, which is like a father, and also it is
for the thoughts of men that should rise high as eagle do.
Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all
living things with feet or wings or roots their children?
And this hide upon the mouthpiece here, which should be bison hide,
is for the earth, from whence we came and at whose breast we suck
as babies all our lives, along with all the animals and birds and trees
and grasses. And because it means all this, and more than any man
can understand, the pipe is holy”
Excerpted from “Black Elk Speaks”, as told through John G. Neihardt
by Nicholas Black Elk.
Publisher, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.