This paper examines the life and experiences of Black Elk, a religious leader of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, as a lens through which to understand the broader collision between Native American culture and white westward expansion during the nineteenth century. Drawing primarily on John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks, the paper traces key events including the Battle of the Hundred Slain, the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Ghost Dance movement, and the Wounded Knee Massacre. It also explores the profound cultural incompatibilities between the Sioux worldview — rooted in sacred interconnection with the natural world — and the ideology of Manifest Destiny, culminating in the destruction of the Sioux way of life.
The paper makes strong use of primary-source quotation as evidence. Rather than simply paraphrasing Neihardt's account, the writer selects passages where Black Elk speaks in his own voice and then briefly analyzes what those words reveal — for example, noting that Black Elk's comment on Crazy Horse demonstrates his awareness of his cousin's humanity despite the near-mythological status others assigned him. This technique of quote-then-interpret is a core skill in humanities writing.
The paper opens with a biographical introduction to Black Elk, then moves chronologically through major events of his life and the Sioux nation's history. A middle section pauses the narrative to analyze the cultural divide between Sioux spirituality and settler ideology. The paper then resumes its chronological arc through Little Big Horn, the Wild West Show, the Ghost Dance, and finally the Wounded Knee Massacre, closing with Black Elk's own elegiac words about the destruction of his people's world.
According to the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (2002), Black Elk (1863–1950) was a Native American religious leader of the Oglala Lakota band of the Sioux tribe. At the age of seventeen, Black Elk had a vision of the Lakota people rising up and freeing their lands from white settlers, and he spent his life trying to find ways of reconciling his people's traditions with Christianity and the encroaching reality of white dominance. This vision was famous among the Sioux: the Powers of the World told Black Elk of a "fearful road, a road of troubles and of war. On this road you shall walk, and from it you shall have the power to destroy a people's foes" (Neihardt, p. 29). Reality, unfortunately, would prove to be quite different. The whites were eventually successful in obliterating the Native Americans' way of life and subjugating their peoples.
This reality, however, was not easily accepted by Black Elk or by any of the Native American tribes. For the purposes of this paper, the focus is on the Oglala Lakota Sioux, though many of the feelings and attitudes discussed can be attributed to most Native American tribes. For Black Elk, his first frame of reference with regard to the white man — or Wasichu — was the Battle of the Hundred Slain. This battle took place on December 21, 1866. Although a Captain Fetterman and 81 of his men were wiped out near Fort Phil Kearney, Black Elk recalled that "every one was saying that the Wasichus were coming and that they were going to take our country and rub us all out" (Neihardt, p. 8). Although the battle was a victory for the Sioux, "a hundred Wasichus was not much if there were others and others without number where those came from" (Neihardt, p. 8). Thus, the reality of what the Sioux were about to face was beginning to sink in.
The Sioux were not successful in the next major engagement. Known by the Sioux as the Attacking of the Wagons and by whites as the Wagon Box Fight, this battle took place about six miles west of Fort Phil Kearney on August 2, 1867. Of the battle, Black Elk said, "It made me afraid again, for we did not win that battle as we did the other one, and there was much mourning among the dead" (Neihardt, p. 16).
The Sioux had a difficult time understanding the white man's culture, especially when it came to his relationship with the earth and its creatures. To the Sioux, everything was alive — the rocks, the wind, the trees, the animals. There was no ownership of land as such, because the Native Americans believed it was impossible to own air, water, or even blades of grass. Every single thing, including the Sioux themselves, was connected in a circle. The circle is considered a highly sacred shape among the Sioux, as well as among most other Native American tribes. When Black Elk described the elaborate circular ritual in his famous vision, he was expressing a sentiment already several hundred years old (Ballantine, pp. 195–6).
The Sioux's way of life and culture was just as alien to most white Americans and settlers of the era. During the 1800s and the period of Manifest Destiny, Americans were moving westward in a migration that grew in numbers following the Civil War. Manifest Destiny refers to the belief, prevalent at the time, that the territorial expansion of the United States was not only inevitable but divinely ordained.
For many Americans, moving west represented the fulfillment of the American Dream: owning land far from the cities, where the nearest neighbor might be at least a half a day's ride away. What white settlers did not take into consideration, however, was that when they moved onto these lands, they were encroaching upon territory already occupied by Native Americans — land that had sustained indigenous ways of life for perhaps thousands of years.
White Americans tended to view Native Americans as either beasts or children, and in either case believed they needed taming and instruction in the ways of "civilization" and Christianity. There were some whites who did not share this prevailing attitude. Mormon leader Brigham Young's stance of tolerance and respect toward Native Americans, for example — and his successful efforts at cooperation and peaceful coexistence with the tribes living in Utah — was virtually unique in the settlement of the West.
For the white man, the West was finally won. For the Sioux, the death knell of their culture and way of life had begun. Black Elk was present at Pine Ridge in 1890, and of the massacre he said:
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