Black Elk
Black Elk
Heȟáka Sápa was a famous wičháša wakȟáŋand heyoka of the Oglala Lakotawho lived in the present-day United States, primarily South Dakota. He was a second cousin of the war chief Crazy Horse...
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death real understanding
It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death. He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka, who is everything; then he knows that world which is real.
praying pipe
When you pray with this pipe, you pray for and with everything.
thinking ifs happened
Whether it happened so or not I do not know; but if you think about it you can see that it is true.
rain clouds grandfather
You see, I had been riding with the storm clouds, and had come to earth as rain, and it was drought that I had killed with the power that the Six Grandfathers gave me.
summer horse years
You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.
horse animal numbers
I looked about me once again, and suddenly the dancing horses without number changed into animals of every kind and into all the fowls that are, and these fled back to the four quarters of the world from whence the horses came, and vanished.
native-american would-be foolish
If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
red sticks earth
So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation's hoop I thrust it in the earth.
given said nations
A good nation I will make live.This the nation above has said.They have given me the power to make over.
prayer earth sacred
As you walk upon the sacred earth, treat each step as a prayer.
white clouds mountain
Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers.
native-american circles shapes
I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.
eye men darkness
It is in the darkness of their eyes that men lose their way.
people vision bison
To use the power of the bison, I had to perform that part of my vision for the people to see.