Black Elk Quotes

48 Sourced Quotes

In sorrow I am sending a feeble voice, O Six Powers of the World. Hear me in my sorrow, for I may never call again. O make my people live!

Black Elk
Then a Voice said: "Behold this day, for it is yours to make. Now you shall stand upon the center of the earth to see, for there they are taking you."

Black Elk
Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers.

Black Elk
Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.

Black Elk
So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation's hoop I thrust it in the earth.

Black Elk
He was the chief of all the horses; and when he snorted, it was a flash of lightning and his eyes were like the sunset star.

Black Elk
The boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us; we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.

Black Elk
I looked about me once again, and suddenly the dancing horses without number changed into animals of every kind and into all the fowls that are, and these fled back to the four quarters of the world from whence the horses came, and vanished.

Black Elk
The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.

Black Elk
All the things of the universe are joined with you who smoke the pipe — All send their voices to Wakan-Tanka, the Great Spirit. When you pray with this pipe, you pray for and with everything.

Black Elk
Then the bay horse spoke to me again and said: "See how your horses all come dancing!" I looked, and there were horses, horses everywhere — a whole skyfull of horses dancing around me.

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.

Black Elk
I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead - and that one was myself.

Black Elk
[The Sun Dancers] also put rabbit skins on their arms and legs, for the rabbit represents humility, because he is quiet and soft and not self-asserting — a quality which we must all possess when we go to the center of the world.

Black Elk
All around the circle, feeding on the green, green grass were fat and happy horses...

Black Elk
If the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet; for such things are of the spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.

Black Elk
Of all the created things or beings in the universe, it is the two-legged men alone, who if they purify and humiliate themselves, may become one with — or may know — Wakan-Tanka.

Black Elk
A good nation I will make live.
This the nation above has said.
They have given me the power to make over.

Black Elk