"You see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing,
for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered.
There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

Last lines of Black Elk Speaks, by John G. Neihardt, l932

"I gave him the words he would have spoken had he been able."

Notes, John G. Neihardt

            Nikolas Black Elk of Black Elk Speaks
            lived sixty more years, died in modern
            times in 1950, not in youth
            at Wounded Knee in 1890.

            Twenty-seven then, he had a wife
            and family to feed, but no more
            buffalo to hunt -- all, all slaughtered
            to starve the hostile holdouts
            onto reservations. So he rode
            into Pine Ridge Agency, signed for
            ration issue beef, fed his people.

            The Sioux had a choice for burial:
            Catholic or Episcopal, two
            cemeteries only; red scaffold
            forbidden on the hill. Nikolas
            came to Jesus as a Catholic
            convert in 1904, catechist
            for the Mission and the Christian God.

            In 1913 five men sundanced
            in secret north of Pine Ridge while 
            three women prayed, records say;
            we have the photographs. The second day
            they were caught, fined for "illegal barbaric
            practices," and thrown in jail: named were
            Marrowbone, Shoulder, and Black Elk too.

            A holy man, he kept both pipe and
            Bible, balancing two worlds, adept
            in both; continued the healing work
            for the People, and saved two hundred
            souls for Holy Rosary Mission,
            which honored him in 1920,
            giving him a green Model A Ford.

            He mended his hoop of relations
            on ten dollars a month, driving through
            the Dakotas, fed them all; survived
            a Depression greater than the stock
            market crash; forced by the Catholic Church
            to recant his words in Black Elk Speaks.

            Who said that the center would not hold,
            the sacred hoop was broken, the tree
            of life was dead? Not Black Elk.