EGREGIOUS IDENTITY POLITICS: THE SAGA OF HEHAKA SAPA (NICHOLAS BLACK ELK) AND FLAMING RAINBOW (JOHN GNEISENAU NEIHARDT) NICHOLAS BLACK ELK JOHN GNEISENAU NEIHARDT 1863 December: As Nicholas Black Elk would later confide to John Gneisenau Neihardt, “I was born in the Moon of the Popping Trees on the Little Powder River in the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed.” HDT WHAT? INDEX NICHOLAS BLACK ELK HEHAKA SAPA 1873 Nicholas Black Elk later reported that it had been in this year, at the age of about ten, that he had his Great Vision in which the Powers of the World, the Grandfathers who were the powers of North, South, East, and West, granted him special abilities. He would allege to have been granted the center of his nation’s hoop.1 1876 June 25: At the Little Bighorn River, the action figures of George Armstrong Custer were overcome by the action figures of Sitting Bull.2 (The manner in which this went against a generally recognized game convention –that you are always supposed to let White win– would engage the fascination of generations of children.3) Allegedly, Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa), although barely a teenager, had taken some part in this fighting on the Little Bighorn. 1. I will footnote here a strangely asymmetrical factoid. Although this is a world in which many must remain in the background while only a few get to be a focus of group attention, one would expect that when people have visions, the typical vision would amount to a non-self-legitimating instruction that the person to whom the vision has been granted ought to remain in the background rather than attempt to seize attention. Quite to the contrary, however, the typical vision that a vision-seeker accomplishes amounts to a self-legitimating instruction, one that entitles them to be a focal point rather than a follower. It would appear therefore that the visionaries among us, the instructors among us, are God’s favorites, and that God does not communicate so readily with those of us who are merely the objects of other’s instruction. –Or something like that. 2. According to an oral history I overheard in Minneapolis, Custer’s last words were: “Well, at least we won’t have to go back through Fargo!” 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX NICHOLAS BLACK ELK HEHAKA SAPA 1881 January 8: John Greenleaf Neihardt was born near Sharpsburg, Illinois, 3rd child of Nicholas Nathan Neihardt and Alice Culler Neihardt.4 1882 Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) became a tribal medicine man. 1886 Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) went to Europe as a performer in the William Cody “Wild Western” Circus. The family of young John Greenleaf Neihardt moved to a sod house in rural northwestern Kansas. 1888 The Victoria Hotel in Kansas City, Kansas was the first to boast a bath for every room. The family of young John Greenleaf Neihardt moved from their rural Kansas sod house into Kansas City. 3. It would also engage the attention of military historians, since General George Armstrong Custer had left his 300-bullet-per- minute Gatling guns behind despite the fact that they could have been disassembled for horse transport. The military historians would suggest that that may have been a mistake. 4. The infant was given the middle name “Greenleaf” in honor of John Greenleaf Whittier (in adulthood he would change this to “Gneisenau” in honor of a German military officer who helped defeat Napoleon). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX NICHOLAS BLACK ELK HEHAKA SAPA 1889 Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) returned from Europe. 1891 The father having abandoned his family, 10-year-old John Greenleaf Neihardt moved with his mother and sisters from Kansas City, Kansas to Wayne, Nebraska. 1897 Sixteen-year-old John Gneisenau Neihardt received his BS degree from Nebraska Normal College and completed his 1st book, a treatise on the philosophy of Vedanta titled THE DIVINE ENCHANTMENT. 1900 With the publication of THE DIVINE ENCHANTMENT, country schoolteacher John Gneisenau Neihardt’s treatise about the philosophy of Vedanta, the 19-year-old author moved from Wayne to Bancroft, Nebraska. There he would work with a trader among the Omaha while becoming something of a white authority on their traditions and customs. 1903 John Gneisenau Neihardt became co-owner and editor of the weekly Bancroft, Nebraska Blade. 1904 December 6, Feast of Saint Nicholas: Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) was baptized and gave up his native medicine. The Catholic priest gave him the Christian name Nicholas. 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX NICHOLAS BLACK ELK HEHAKA SAPA 1905 John Gneisenau Neihardt left the Nebraska Blade in order to devote himself to the writing of fiction and lyric verses. 1908 John Gneisenau Neihardt voyaged by canoe down the Missouri River (he would write this up in 1910 as THE RIVER AND I). He proposed to and was accepted in marriage by a sculptor he had not yet met in person, his correspondent Mona Martinsen (the couple would produce four children — Enid, Sigurd, Hilda, and Alice). 1910 John Gneisenau Neihardt’s THE RIVER AND I. 1912 At the age of 31, John Gneisenau Neihardt began work on his A CYCLE OF THE WEST: THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS, THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS, THE SONG OF JED SMITH, THE SONG OF THE INDIAN WARS, THE SONG OF THE MESSIAH. He would not complete this massive project until 1941. (Eventually, A CYCLE OF THE WEST would be described by Men and Women of Letters as “one of the 3,000 best books in the 3,000 years from Homer to Hemingway.”) 1919 John Gneisenau Neihardt was awarded the national prize of the Poetry Society. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX NICHOLAS BLACK ELK HEHAKA SAPA 1920 Nicholas Black Elk went to the reservation hospital for treatment for his ulcers, and there received the Holy Sacrament. Evidently his baptism as a child had not “taken”? When his ulcers disappeared, with the encouragement of his friend Kills Brave, he became for the first time seriously involved with Roman Catholicism. John Gneisenau Neihardt relocated with his family to Branson, Missouri (where they would reside until 1947). 1921 By legislative action, John Gneisenau Neihardt became Poet Laureate of Nebraska. 1925 John Gneisenau Neihardt became the 1st civilian member of the Order of Indian Wars of the United States (whatever that amounted to, it certainly sounds repulsive). 1926 John Gneisenau Neihardt became literary editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX NICHOLAS BLACK ELK HEHAKA SAPA 1931 Nicholas Black Elk and John Gneisenau Neihardt met for the first time.(Since neither spoke more than a few words of the other’s language, this must have been a teeny little bit like Paul meeting Jesus for the first time. For certain sure, Neihardt glommed onto the idea that Identity Politics was going to get him everywhere. This dude was an authentic grade A certified redskin — all the white poet would need to do was glom onto his voice, and then everybody would need to listen respectfully to the white poet. Can you spell S-E-L-F-L-E-G-I-T- I-M-A-T-I-O-N?) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX NICHOLAS BLACK ELK HEHAKA SAPA 1932 John Gneisenau Neihardt. BLACK ELK SPEAKS, BEING THE LIFE STORY OF A HOLY MAN OF THE OGLALA SIOUX. NY: Morrow, 19325 1934 January 26, Friday: Samuel Goldwyn purchased the film rights to L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ. Germany and Poland entered into a non-aggression pact. Prime Minister Camille Chautemps, despite the fact that his government was enjoying majorities in both houses, needed to resign due to his inability to cope with rightist street demonstrations (he was being accused in the streets of complicity with a corrupt bond dealer Alexandre Stavisky, who had recently died in police custody). Nikola Uzunovic replaced Milan Srskic as prime minister of Yugoslavia. Nicholas Black Elk wrote (or created in collaboration with his daughter Lucy) a letter complaining about the manner in which his life had been truncated and misrepresented by John Gneisenau Neihardt in BLACK ELK SPEAKS, BEING THE LIFE STORY OF A HOLY MAN OF THE OGLALA SIOUX: 5. No less popular an authority on native stuff la-de-da than Dee Brown, white perpetrator of BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE, would endorse this new book: “Thousands of books have been written about Indians, and there are many fine ones. But if you could only preserve one book about the American Indian, it would have to be BLACK ELK SPEAKS.” This sort of stuff was Dee’s cup of tea! According to Alan R. Velie “It is inconceivable that Neihardt knew nothing about Black Elk’s religious life as a Christian. It seems rather that he had little interest in it, and pretended that it did not exist.” 8 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX NICHOLAS BLACK ELK HEHAKA SAPA Holy Rosary Mission Pine Ridge, S. Dak. January 26, 1934 Black Elk Speaks Again — A Last Word I shake hands with my white friends. Listen, I speak some true words. A white man made a book and told what I had spoken of olden times, but the new times he left out. So I speak again, a last word. I am now an old man.... In the last thirty years I am different from what the white man wrote about me. I am a Christian...