BLACK ELK POSTER

Black Elk – 1863 – 1950. Born in the ‘winter where the four Crows were killed’ in the ‘month of ripe cherries’ (possibly July 1864), on Little Powder River (what’s now Wyoming). He was an Oglala Lakota and a second cousin to Crazy Horse. Black Elk was a father, a warrior/medicine man, a shaman and a visionary. At the tender age of five he had his first vision. At nine, he experienced a very long, prophetic and complex vision – it was a vision of the terrible future of his tribe. He called the vision “The Hoop of The Nation.” He saw that the hoop of his nation was one of many hoops, which is something we have yet to learn… He saw the cooperation of all the hoops, all the nations in grand procession. The vision was an experience of himself as going through the realms of spiritual imagery that were of his culture… In 1876, at just the tender age of 12, Black Elk participated in the legendary Battle of the Little Big Horn. In1877, he was devastated by the murder of Crazy Horse, and fled with the Big Road band to Canada. However, in 1880 he returned to the Lakota reservation in America and in 1881 he finally revealed his boyhood vision in the 'horse dance'. He was the Holy man of the Oglala Sioux…and here is his vision: "You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round... The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours... Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves." Black Elk, a child of vision - a hero for his people. OTHER ARTEOLOGY CREATIONS IN THIS SERIES: