Black Elk (1863-1950)

Born to a medicine man who followed Crazy Horse, Black Elk witnessed the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 and the upheaval that followed the tribe’s flight to Canada to join Sitting Bull. In 1886 he joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. In 1889 he eturned to the Pine Ridge Reservation, where, as a spiritual authority, he supported the Ghost Dance movement. The movement, built on the belief that ritual observances would cause the white people to leave and the buffalo to return, declined after it failed to protect its followers at the Battle of Wounded Knee. In 1904 he was converted by a priest to the Catholic faith and took the name Nicholas Black Elk. As a member of the Society of St. Joseph, he helped sponsor the annual Catholic Sioux Congress and was active in converting others to Catholicism. For more on Black Elk’s Catholicism, take a look at Michael F. Steltenkamp, Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala.
(From Americanwriters.org)