¶ … Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (2002), Black Elk (1863-1950) was a Native American religious leader of the Oglala Lakota band of the Sioux tribe. Black Elk, who at the age of 17 had a vision of the Lakota people rising up and freeing their lands from the white settlers, tried to find ways of reconciling his people's traditions with Christianity and the encroaching reality of white dominance. This vision was a famous one among the Sioux in which the Powers of the World told Black Elk of a "fearful road, a road of troubles and of war. On this road you shall walk, and from it you shall have the power to destroy a people's foes" (Neihardt, p. 29). Reality, unfortunately, would prove to be quite different. The whites were eventually successful in obliterating the Native Americans' way of life and subjugating the peoples.
This reality, however, was not easily accepted by Black Elk or by any of the Native American tribes. (For the purposes of this paper, the focus is on the Oglala Lakota Sioux, but many feelings and attitudes can be attributed to most of the Native American tribes.) For Black Elk, his first frame of reference with regards to the white man, or "Wasichu," was the Battle of the Hundred Slain. This battle took place on December 21, 1866, and although a Captain Fetterman and 81 of his men were wiped out in this battle near Fort Phil Kearney, Black Elk recalled that "every one was saying that the Wasichus were coming and that they were going to take our country and rub us all out" (Neihardt, p. 8). Although the battle was a victorious one for the Sioux, "a hundred Wasichus was not much if there were others and others without number where those came from" (Neihardt, p. 8). Thus, the reality of what the Sioux were about to face was beginning to sink in.
Sure enough, the Sioux were not successful in the next battle. Known by the Sioux as the Attacking of the Wagons and by whites as The Wagon Box Fight, this battle took place about six miles west of Fort Phil Kearney on August 2, 1867. Of the battle, Black Elk says, "It made me afraid again, for we did not win that battle as we did the other one, and there was much mourning among the dead" (Neihardt p. 16).
The Sioux had a difficult time understanding the white man's culture, especially when it came to his relationship with the earth and its creatures. To the Sioux, everything was alive, the rocks, the wind, the trees, the animals. There was no ownership of land per se, because the Native Americans believed that it was impossible to own air, water, even blades of grass. Every single thing, including the Sioux, was connected in a circle. In fact, the circle is considered a highly sacred shape among the Sioux, as well as most other Native American tribes. When Black Elk reported the elaborate circular ritual that takes place in his famous vision, he was, in fact, expressing a sentiment already several hundred years old (Ballantine, p. 195-6).
However, the Sioux's way of life and culture was just as alien to most white Americans and settlers of this time. During the 1800s and the period of Manifest Destiny, Americans were moving westward, a migration that grew in numbers following the Civil War. (Manifest Destiny refers to the belief prevalent at this time that territorial expansion of the United States was not only inevitable, but divinely ordained.)
Thus, for many Americans, moving west was the fulfillment of the American Dream: owning land that was far from the cities, where the nearest neighbor was at least a half a day's ride away. However, what white settlers did not take into consideration was the fact that when they moved onto these lands, they were encroaching upon land already occupied by the Native Americans, land that had been sustaining their way of life for perhaps thousands of years.
White Americans tended to view Native Americans as either beasts or children -- and both needed taming and instruction in the ways of "civilization" and in Christianity. However, there were some whites who did not share in the prevailing attitude of the day. Mormon leader Brigham Young's attitude of tolerance and respect towards Native Americans, for example, and his successful attempts at cooperation and peaceful coexistence with the tribes living in Utah, was virtually unique in the settlement of the West.
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