Black Elk

Black Elk was an Oglala warrior and priest. He was a participant at Little Big Horn and he survived the Wounded Knee massacre. His account of Sioux religious rites was published in The Sacred Pipe (1953), edited by John Epes Brown.

When I was older, I learned what the fighting was about that winter and the next summer. Up on the Madison Fork the Wasichus (white men) had found much of the yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy, and they wanted to have a road up through our country to the place where the yellow metal was; but my people did not want the road. It would scare the bison and make them go away, and also it would let the other Wasichus come in like a river. They told us that they wanted only to use a little land, as much as a wagon would take between the wheels; but our people knew better. And when you look about you now, you can see what it was they wanted. - from Black Elk Speaks, by John G. Neihardt, c. 1880

I can remember when the bison were so many that they could not be counted, but more and more Wasichus (white men) came to kill them until there were only heaps of bones scattered where they used to be. The Wasichus did not kill them to eat; they killed them for the metal that makes them crazy, and they took only the hides to sell. Sometimes they did not even take the hides, only the tongues; and I have heard that fireboats came down the Missouri River loaded with dried bison tongues. You can see that the men who did this were crazy. Sometimes they did not even take the tongues; they just killed and killed because they liked to do that. When we hunted bison, we killed only what we needed. And when there was nothing left but heaps of bones, the Wasichus came and gathered up even the bones and sold them. Ibid.

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes, within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, 1953.