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4.5
Here is the story of the last 45 years of Black Elk's extraordinary life. Anthropologist author Steltenkamp, who taught school for a time at the Red Cloud Indian School of the Pine Ridge Reservation where he met Black Elk's daughter Lucy, shows that Black Elk's spirituality was not limited to the traditional Indian religion of his early life as a Medicine Man--an impression created about him, however, in studies by anthropologists John Neihardt and Joseph E. Brown. Rather, following a remarkable conversion experience, Black Elk actually disavowed Indian ritual-healing practices (which he saw as having been self-aggrandizing and largely ineffectual) and fully embraced Christian values in a very devoted role as Roman Catholic catechist/evangelist amongst his own and other Indian groups where his work was welcome and effective.Steltenkamp shows that the studies of Neihardt and Brown helped to perpetuate a false view of the former Indian Holy Man as a prototypical example of the happy "noble savage" defeated and depressed (after Wounded Knee in 1890) by the brutal incursions of the White Man's destructive, unwelcome religion/civilization. Black Elk's life is an example, rather, of how he and an entire group contended with the Change challenges to Native Tradition so as to welcome and converge their own religion with Christian themes--and they did so with satisfaction.Anyone who reads Steltenkamp's book carefully will understand that Neihardt and Brown themselves didn't mean to deliberately create the specifically "New Age" attitudes that some religionists criticize them for fostering. Although Steltenkamp points to "unjust" attitudes that were created, he credits N's and B's books as being valuable for having captured and represented some of the remarkable aspects of Black Elk's character. Quoting a letter from J. E. Brown, who was his colleague in anthropological scholarship, he shows how Brown encouraged him and gave him greater incentive in his undertaking to present the post-conversion years of BEs life, which Lucy and other Indians felt was MOST important. Brown wrote: "I have felt it improper that this phase of his life was never presented by Neihardt or indeed by myself. I suppose somehow it was thought this Christian participation compromised his 'Indianness,' but I do not see it this way and think it time that the record was set straight."As anthropologist, Steltenkamp sets the stage for BEs life story with two chapters about Lakota Culture and Genealogy. (I found the information a bit difficult to fully comprehend because so unusual.) He then provides eight more chapters where he deals with collected testimonies and memories in the categories of Conversion, Catechist, Missionary, Life Story, Sacred Visions, Elder, Farewell, and Evaluations. The greatest part of the story account is mostly repeated verbatim from recorded conversations with Lucy, other Indian people, or taken from the diaries of priests with whom Black Elk worked. One is able to get a real, in-depth sense of the man and the all-pervasive VALUES that he held and lived in service to Catholic religion. There are lots of photographs; one of the nicest, taken in 1937, is of Black Elk and his wife and family with neighbors. He was fond of children and liked to work with them, and the book jacket photo appropriately shows him down on the floor with some children whom he's teaching by means of a large scroll that was his cachechist's "Map."There's plenty of information about his "Visions" for any reader who happens to be interested in that aspect of Black Elk's Life. And there's also a good deal of incidental information about the Indian religious culture, some of which BE found to be integrally related to his Christianity: Black Elk was given a vision in his early days which he came to understand more and more over time as a foreshadowing that "came to pass" when he was converted and became a catechist. The vision involved a panoramic view of two roads that stood for Good and Evil passages through life. By coincidence, the "iconography" of the vision turned out to correspond to the map "icon" that was later given him as a tool for catechesis. Further, among the numerous remarkable Black Elk realizations recounted in the "Sacred Visions" chapter is his explanation of how the Sun Dance and other traditional Indian ceremonies were prefigurations of Christianity. He said that the religion of the Indians was very comparable to that of the Israelites in Old Testament times (and this book quotes some of the ways in which he discussed with a priest-friend of his how this was so).Talking about the history of peace-pipe usage, Lucy told how the pipe was given the Indians by a woman who came to them in the ancient past as a benevolent "mother-with-child" personage whom they called Buffalo Cow Woman. She told them the pipe was to be used as an instrument of PRAYER directed to the Great Spirit: "Just like commandments, [the lady] told [the people] that men should be peaceful men, nice men. There should be no quarrels or arguments, no committing any kind of adultery, and no feelings to criticize. The Great Spirit created all things through his power, so man has to love all the creatures--even the trees. This was what the Pipe Lady instructed. Father Buechel accepted the Blessed Virgin as the same one who brought the pipe, and that was what we always thought." (--There were a few further remarks about the meaningfulness of Trees which I found intriguing from the point of view of religious imagery.)In the "Farewell" chapter are accounts of the very extraordinary natural phenomena that were visible to everyone in the sky at the time of Black Elk's last illness and particularly surrounding his funeral. (This account was just amazing. A Jesuit Brother's description of the lights and illuminations in the sky that he observed takes up two pages.)Since Steltenkamp is writing an anthropological study, his evaluations of meaningfulness to be derived from Black Elk's last 45 years of life are related mainly to assessing the effects of change on a traditional past way of religious and ritual life especially with regard to the person who was Black Elk. But, beyond those important considerations, the presentation of Black Elk's life and death as a Christian/Catholic phenomenon is bound to offer certain readers some provocative challenges and/or gratifying considerations regarding Black Elk's view of Christianity, and notably its role in the history of human religions. It seems important (to me) that the contents of this book about Black Elk's later life along with his early history, too, should become much better known than it is. Undoubtedly, many people's ideas, lives, and even their souls would be changed by knowing Black Elk's life experiences more fully than has been possible through the Neihardt and Brown books about him, although those must be useful too. It would be a good thing, for instance, if gnostics and/or neo-pagans were to become aware of this material as a further gloss or "progress beyond" the purity and goodness that they may perceive and cherish with regard to earlier pagan ways of life.Anyway, this is an interesting and valuable account about an extraordinary life. It seems a bit boggy or hard to concentrate on in spots but I'm not sure why.... I think it's a good thing that he kept to a careful transliteration of conversations even though some of them don't read smoothly. I'm not sure that the memoir contained within the larger framework of a scholarly anthropological study "works" well, but am glad to have the book just as it is in its present form and would hope for another book that's a little more fully developed just as a biography.
