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Black Elk of the Oglala
The pale moon rising comes full from its journey
and takes its place above the dark Lakota land.
The year is 1864 as “Winter the Four Crows were killed
in Month of Wild Cherries” is born in Big Road’s Band.
A brother to five sisters and one just like himself,
the son of a shaman with the vision he was born.
Only a manchild when his destiny took him
with Crazy Horse to the Battle of Little Big Horn.
The great sadness in his heart from the siege at Wounded
Knee would take him three long years to Canada.
Returning he revealed the great vision of his youth –
in the “horse dance” he became one with wakanda.*
Spirits of the wakan said embrace the great “ghost dance,”
but haunted him with the massacre at Wounded Knee.
Knowledge was his torment and the struggle to accept
the shameful failure of his vision to set his people free.
The west winds blew across the mountains and the plains
and with Buffalo Bill Cody he did roam.
In great cities throughout Europe he performed the sacred rites
but return, he did, eventually to his north Oglala home.
A catholic marriage changed him and a Christian he became
and Four Crows was given a new Christian name.
“Nicholas Black Elk,” the former shaman, now a catechist to some,
was still famous for Yuwipi** just the same.
It has been written that he died a defeated old Lakota medicine man
teaching the white man’s Christian ways. And, that on nights
when the moon is full, the fearless warrior who was Four Crows
sits horseback and weeps at the grave where Black Elk lays.***
*sacred mystery
**ceremony for healing
***Nicholas Black Elk is buried at St. Agnes Mission Chapel in Manderson, South Dakota.
-Brenda Joyce, Rancho Mirage, CA
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