Words from Black Elk

"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."

Black Elk


I did not know then how much was ended.
When I look back now from this high hill
of my old age, I can still see the
butchered women and children lying heaped
and scattered all along the crooked gulch
as plain as when I saw them with
eyes still young. And I can see that something
else died there in the bloody mud and was
buried in the blizzard.
A people's dream died there.
It was a beautiful dream.
And I, to whom so great a vision
was given in my youth, you see me now
a pitiful old man who has done nothing,
for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered.
There is no center any longer, and the
sacred tree is dead.

Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk)
Medicine Man of the Oglala Sioux, 1931


You have noticed that everything an Indian
does in a circle,
and that is because the Power of the World
always works in circles, and everything
tries to be round.
In the old days all our power came to us
from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was
unbroken the people flourished. The flowering tree was the
living center of the hoop,
and the circle of the four quarters nourished it.
The east gave peace and light, the south
gave warmth, the west gave rain and
the north with its cold and mighty wind gave
strength and endurance.
This knowledge came to us from the outer
world with our religion.
Everything the power of the world does is
done in a circle. The sky is round and I
have heard that the earth is round like a ball
and so are all the stars. The wind, in its
greatest power, whirls. Birds
make their nests in circles, for theirs
is the same religion as ours.
The sun comes forth and goes down again
in a circle. The moon does the
same and both are round. Even the seasons
form a great circle in their
changing and always come back again to where
they were.

The life of a man is a circle from
childhood to childhood, and so it
is in everything where power moves.
Our teepees were round like the
nests of birds, and these were always
set in a circle, the nation's
hoop, a nest of many nests, where the
Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.
Black Elk
Oglala Sioux 1863-1950