Neihardt on Black Elk Spirituality

His meeting with the Sioux holy man Black Elk, John G. Neihardt once said, was the most memorable experience of his life. In 1930, while working on the concluding poem of his Cycle Of The West, Neihardt had gone to the Pine Ridge Reservation hoping to find “some old medicine man who had been active in the Messiah Movement and who might be induced to talk with me about the deeper spiritual significance of the matter.” In Neihardt, Black Elk recognized the one who had been sent to learn what “was given to me for men.” The next summer, in a long series of talks, Black Elk imparted his own life story and the story of the Oglala Sioux during the tragic decades of the Little Big Horn, the ghost-dance rising, and the Wounded Knee massacre.

John Neihardt taught English at the University of Missouri from 1949 to the early 1960s. One of his courses titled Epic America was immensely popular and always had a waiting list for admittance to the course. In the early 60s, the course was video-taped so it could be offered after his retirement from the university. This lecture is a revised and re-edited version of a lecture in the Epic America course.