Black Elk Speaks (51 page)

10
. This should be, “he then unbraided my hair”; the wording here repeats an error in the stenographic record (
Sixth Grandfather,
227). Unbraided hair, like nakedness, was a sign of humility. Black Elk said that the vision seeker must make himself “lower than even the smallest ant” (Brown
, The Sacred Pipe,
54n, 4). By making oneself pitiful, a man attracted the sympathy of the spirits
.

11
. Neíhardt added this reference to crazy Horse
.

12
. The transcript has “I just cried myself to death nearly”
(Sixth Grandfather,
228). Again, Neihardt is attempting to articulate Black Elk’s emotions
.

13
. In the transcript, Black Elk mentions seeing only a single dog’s head
(Sixth Grandfather,
229)
.

14
. The transcript states that the dog’s head transforms into a man’s head, without specifying it as a white man’s head. Black Elk told Neihardt in a comment that failed to be included in the typescript but is preserved in the stenographic record, “The dog in this vision was a symbol of any enemy”
(Sixth Grandfather,
229, 231
).

15
. The expression, “the drums of many giants” is Neihardt’s; the transcript does not use either “drums” or “giants” in describing the sound of the hail
(Sixth Grandfather,
230
).

16
. The transcript has “The color of the star seemed to be all colors,” referring only to the morning star
(Sixth Grandfather,
231
).

17
. The transcript indicates that Black Elktold the old men about his vision while they were together in the sweat lodge
(Sixth Grand father,
231
).

18
. When an individual had a vision of the Thunder-beings, he or she must participate in a heyókha ceremony (
‘make or impersonate heyoka’), enacting the role of ceremonial clown and publicly acknowledging the powers given by the West. Any who failed to make such acknowledgment, it was believed, would be killed by lighting. See Tyon in Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 155–57
.

1
. Basic ethnographic sources on the heyoka ceremony are Dorsey), “A Study of Siouan Cults,” 468–71 (including Bushotter’s account); Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations of the Oglala,” 82–85; Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 157–72; Tyon in Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 155–57.

2
. The metaphor of “two faces”—the classical tragedy and comedy—is Neihardt’s; it is not found in the transcript.

3
.

4
. Water could be boiled in a buffalo stomach, suspended from a tripod. Rocks were heated in a fire, dropped into the water, and removed as they cooled, to be replaced with others. This was the oldest method known to the Lakotas for boiling meat. See High Hawk in Curtis, The North American Indian, vol. 3,159. In this ceremony, however, it seems more likely that an iron kettle was used, placed over a fire. In the transcript, there is no mention of stone boiling
.

5
. This offering prayer and the song that follows were not recorded as part of the heyókha ceremony. In the transcript they appear as part of the pipe ceremony under the heading “Prayerto Go with the Vision.” Neihardt has revised the wording of the prayer; in the transcript it reads: “To the Great Spirit’s day; to the center of that day I will go and make an offering” (Sixth Grandfather, 287)
.

6
. “The day of the sun” is apparently a mistranslation of
‘day sun,’ which the Lakotas differentiate from
‘night sun,’the moon
.

7
. In the transcript, Black Elk says that there were thirty heyokas, but he does not equate them with the number of days in a month (Sixth Grandfather, 233). Rather, the Lakotas recognized lunar months. Black Elk commented, “the moon lives twenty-eight days, and this is our month” (Brown, The Sacred Pipe, 80)
.

8
. In his great vision, when Black Elk killed the dog in the midst of flames, One Side accompanied him (Sixth Grandfather, 130-31). (Neihardt omitted this episode of the vision in Black Elk Speaks.) Black Elk told Neihardt that the man’s name was originally Kills the Enemy, but that after this ceremony he changed it to One Side (Sixth Grandfather, 235)
.

9
. The transcript has “repeated about twelve times,” without reference to the months (Sixth Grandfather, 233). The Lakotas, before adopting the western calendar, counted thirteen moons in a year. For Lakota time divisions, see Walker, Lakota Society, 122–23.

10
. The transcript makes clear that it is the other heyokas who rush to thepot, thrusting their hands in the boiling water to retrieve pieces of meat. It is they who pass them on to the people. See
Sixth Grandfather,
234. The ceremony is called heyókha woze ‘heyoka taking out food.’ The heyokas rubbed a paste made by chewing red false mallow (Malvastrum coccineum [Pursh]) on their hands and for earms to prevent them from being scalded. See Tyon’s account in Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 155–57,”d Gilmore, “Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region,” 103
.

11
. Neihardt based the last two paragraphs on comments made by Black Elk during a visit to the Badlands, as they gazed westward toward the Black Hills in the distance: “We see here the strange lands of the world [the Bad-lands], and on this side you see the greenness of the world [the plains] and down there the wideness of the world [the prairies], the colors of the earth. And you mill set them in your mind” (
Sixth Grandfather,
44-45)
.

1
. In this paragraph Neihardt summarizes Black Elk’s discussion of the sacred hoop (
Sixth Grandfather,
290-91), embellishing for literary effect. The expressions “Power of the World,” referring to
, and “nest of many nests,” referring to the camp circle, are Neihardt’s. The sentence “I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are the stars,” does not appear in the transcript and serves here to place Black Elk outside the sphere of western scientific knowledge, while at the same time suggesting compatibility between Lakota and western beliefs. Another significant discussion of the symbolism of the circle, by Tyon, is in Walker, “The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota,” 160
.

2
. The transcript reads, “On this earth the two-legged will not perish” (
Sixth Grandfather,
238)
.

3
. In the transcript, the last line is in the present tense, “I have made him walk” (
Sixth Grandfather,
238)
.

1
.
The first two paragraphs are Neihardt’s summary; they have no specific parallel in the interview transcript. The metaphor of Black Elk as “a hole through which the power could come” is apparently Neihardt’s.

2
.
Basic ethnographic sources on the Buffalo ceremony are Dorsey, “A Study of Siouan Cults,” 475–76 (including Bushotter’s account); Wissler, “Oglala Societies,” 91–92; Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 173–76; Tyon in Walker
, Lakota Belief and Ritual,
153
.

3
.
This paragraph is Neihardt’s summary, based in part on the transcript. See
Sixth Grandfather,
240
.

4
. This paragraph is based on material dictated as part of the telling of the great vision. The transcript reads: “Black Elk says at this point [the episode of walking the red road from south to north] he has a queer feeling all the time he is telling this, and that he is giving his power away. He feels that he will die very soon afterward” (
Sixth Grandfather,
126). The expression, “I am only a pitiful old man after all,” although it could be taken as a ritual expression as in prayer to the spirits, is here more likely Neihardt’s phrasing. Nowhere in the transcript does Black Elk refer to himself as “pitiful.”

5
.
The transcript makes clear that the altar, in the shape of a buffalo wallow, was made inside the ceremonial lodge, on the east side, by the doorway. See
Sixth Grandfather, 240. 

6
. According to the transcript, this ceremony took place when Black Elk was twenty-one years old, 1884 (
Sixth Grandfather,
242)
.

7
. This sentence is Neihardt’s. The Elk ceremony celebrates male generative power. Basic ethnographic sources on the Elk ceremony are Fletcher, “The Elk Mystery” (based on first-hand observation of a ceremony among the Oglalas in 1881); Wissler, “Oglala Societies,” 85-88; Densmore
, Teton Sioux Music,
176-79; Walker
, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 135.

8
. The image of Black Elk as standing "between the Power of the World and the nation’s hoop” has no correlate in the transcript
.

9
. Again, this paragraph weaves into Black Elk’s account images that are distinctively Neihardt’s: seeds sprouting; “the night of the womb”; men’s power hidden behind women’s power of life; “The woman is the life of the flowering tree, but the man must feed and care for it”; and “all these powers together are women’s power.”