Black Elk as a Voice of Latter-Day Shamans

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During the course of his long life, Black Elk experienced the traumatic transition from a largely traditional nomadic existence subsisting on the plentiful bison herds to a conquered and humiliated people not allowed by law to practice their traditional spiritual/religious practices. Most other First Nations in North America had experienced this transition earlier and they did not benefit from the assistance of a John Neihardt to record their sacred visions and traditional lifestyle. Some Jesuit missionaries in the 17^th and 18^th centuries wrote extensively of their observations while living with First Nations from the Montagnais in eastern Quebec to the Miami in Michigan – but it was, understandably, not a totally sympathetic portrayal (their primary job being to convert the peoples whom they contacted).

What then can be said of the more extraordinary claims made by Black Elk, such as being able to heal community members based on a vision, or being able to make it rain by reciting certain prayers and performing certain rituals? A rationalist who would read Black Elk Speaks would undoubtedly consider such claims to be outlandish fabrications or, at best, that the old Lakota elder just imagined that we was doing these things. How are we to interpret these details? Surely, there is no corroborating evidence to buttress Black Elk’s claim – right?

On the contrary; there are loads of solid evidence, covering the length and breadth of North America and covering several centuries of time, that show the fact that Black Elk was, at least in practice, quite a common shaman. The evidence is provided through the extraordinary book, The World We Used to Live In, written by Vine Deloria, Jr.

But first, who was Vine Deloria Jr.? How can his book be trusted as being authoritative? Leaving aside the fact that he was one of the first published Native American intellectuals, at first glance one would not Vine Deloria Jr. to be an author of a book of extraordinary (and, to many, unbelievable) stories about the powers and abilities of shamans. Vine held university degrees in Science and Theology. Much of his career focused on native policy, politics and activism. He trained himself in history, law, politics, and education and became an expert in the legal and political situations of hundreds of tribes across the USA. Deloria’s academic career spanned more than three decades and primarily focused on political science. He played important roles in the National Congress of American Indians, the Institute for the Development of Indian Law and the National Museum of the American Indian. Not exactly the kind of resume one would automatically be associated with a collection of stories about shamans.

But it is also important to be aware that Deloria was Lakota citizen of Standing Rock and came from a long line of holy people who sought to live in peace with the natural world and serve their community. His father personally knew Black Elk, whom Vine Jr. held in high esteem. In his forward to Black Elk Speaks, Deloria called the book, "a religious classic, perhaps the only religious classic of this century."

In a way, The World We Used to Live In was Vine Deloria Jr.’s swan song, as he finished the final revisions of the manuscript mere days before he died on November 13, 2005. I have read several of his books and while I have been impressed by and learned a great deal from each of them, none come even close to the heights achieved in The World We Used to Live In. Black Elk’s legacy may have been to record his personal shamanic experiences, but I see Vine Deloria Jr.’s legacy to be recording the broad range and impressive feats of shamans all over Turtle Island (North America) which would otherwise have faded away in hundreds of forgotten documents scattered in private collections and reference libraries.

Why drove Vine to write this book? He explains it as follows:

A collection of these stories, placed in a philosophical framework, might demonstrate to the present and coming generations the sense of humility, the reliance on the spirits, and the immense powers that characterized our people in the old days. It might also inspire people to treat their ceremonies with more respect and to seek out the great powers that are always available to people who look first to the spirits and then to their own resources.

For the skeptic, one of the most convincing things about The World We Used to Live In is that many of the accounts are made by non-Indigenous people (Christian priests, trappers, police) who would naturally downplay or explain away the feats of shamans that they saw with their own eyes. There is power in the testimony of a person who says that they cannot explain, let alone believe, what they experienced but insist that their account is true. 

One of the oldest accounts included in the book is from The Jesuit Relations of 1642. In it the Jesuit records the story of a man who as a teenager went on a vision quest and after fasting for 16 days, saw a beautiful old man come down from the sky and foretold his future – details such as how he would live to a ripe old age, how many children he would have and the sequence of their genders. The heavenly visitor (which the Jesuit called a Demon) then offered the youth human flesh to eat, which he refused; and then offered bear fat, which he then ate. The visitor often returned to the man and promised to assist him. The Jesuit stated that what the ‘Demon’ told the man had come true and that he had been immune to the numerous communicable illness that had devastated his community. Further, this man had uncanny success in hunting and had the ability to predict the number of animals that his friends would catch in their snares or during a hunt.  

The typical traditional medicine man was given the power to heal people through a vision in which a spirit in the form of an animal or plant would teach them the power via the singing of healing songs and specific remedies (often herbal). But not always. Some are downright odd. Deloria quotes an account of Sitting Bull who, after being shot in the back by some Crows, and bleeding in the chest, back and mouth, asked a local Cheyenne to point him to an ant-mound. Sitting Bull collected a handful of ants, swallowed them, and said “Now, I shall be well,” whereupon he mounted his horse and left. He made a full recovery.

Another story is of a medicine man by the name of White Crow, who was called to heal a woman – but he did not bring with him the usual paraphernalia of rattle, drum, or medicine kit often associated with medicine men. White Crow did not even sing or talk to the ill woman. He simply sat beside her for some time and then took a root out of his pocket, cut it in two, and gave one piece for the woman to chew and swallow and the second piece for her to chew and rub on her chest. Her recovery was almost instant.

Yet another odd healing was recounted by the captain of the ship The Bear while anchored somewhere in the Alaskan islands. When some natives were on board trading with the sailors, one native girl suddenly fell gravely ill and started to vomit copious quantities of blood from her lungs. Before the ship’s surgeon could be called, the medicine man of the people promptly went to the girl, blew in each ear and tapped her on the chin. Within two minutes the girl had made a complete recovery as if she had never been ill. The captain stated that he had never seen anything so marvellous before in his life.

Many accounts have been given of reviving people from death itself. A Saulteaux shaman named Northern Barred Owl, from the Lake Winnipeg area, is recorded to have travelled to cure a girl but the girl died shortly before he arrived at the community. Undeterred, Northern Barred Owl lay down beside the girl and tied a piece of red yarn around her wrist. Then he went into a deep trance and did not move at all for some time. Eventually, he moved – and the girl moved as well, matching his moves. After some time, both awoke. The shaman told the family and other observers that his soul followed the girl on her way to the realm of the dead and when he found her, he brought her back to the land of the living with the help of the red yarn.

The World We Used to Live In includes many accounts of ill individuals who could not be cured by any ‘White doctor’ and so a native medicine man was called in the hope of a cure. In one case, the family of a woman suffering from an unspecified illness called a shaman as no White doctors had been able to cure her. The shaman told the ill woman’s husband that her guardian spirit had left her body and was now stuck in the mud of the river. The shaman then had his guardian spirit listen for the song of the woman's guardian spirit. The shaman then started to sing a song, upon which the woman arose and sang it together with him. Her guardian spirit was returned and she was cured.

Ethnographer Charles Lummis described the common practice of medicine men using a hollow bone or other hollow object to suck out an illness (attributed to an invasion by tiny entities) from a patient. Such “operations” usually resulted in the procurement of some object - shells, parts of plants, stones, and other objects - to demonstrate that he had ejected the entity that had made the person ill. Skeptics have easily dismissed such cures as the equivalent of stage magic: that is, slight of hand. Certainly, instances of medicine men using trickery in this regard have been found. But does this mean that every single cure of this nature is a trick? Doing so involves applying a logical fallacy. It is also difficult to “explain away” cures in which the medicine man is wearing nothing but a breech cloth and is surrounded by people when treating the patient. An example below defies logic or attempts at “explaining it away”:

A shaman dances up to a sick person in the audience, puts the top of the feather against the patient, and with the quill in his mouth sucks diligently for a moment. The feather seems to swell to a great size, as though some large object were passing through it. Then it resumes its natural size, the shaman begins to cough and choke, and directly with his hand draws from his mouth a large rag, or a big stone, or a foot-long branch of the myriad-bristling buckhorn-cactus-while the patient feels vastly relieved at having such an unpleasant lodger removed from his cheek or neck or eye!

Shamans typically provided various services to community members: one of the fairly common ones was finding lost objects. Among the peoples of the Great Plains, this was typically accomplished with the help of the shaman’s sacred stones. A particularly vivid and detailed account was given by Bull Head describing the exploits of a shaman named White Shield, performed within a house:

One old man lost part of a harness. Knowing that White Shield often recovered lost articles by the aid of the sacred stones, he appealed to him, asking him to find the missing part of his harness and also a handsome tobacco bag and pipe.

White Shield came, and in giving the performance held the stone in the palm of his hand, saying, "This will disappear." Bull Head said that though he watched it very closely, it suddenly vanished from before his eyes. The length of time that a stone is absent depends on the distance it must travel in finding the lost object. In this instance the stone was gone a long time. At last a rattle was heard at the door. White Shield stopped the singing, and said, "The stone has returned; be ready to receive it." He then opened the door, and the stone was found on the doorstep.

White Shield brought it in and heard the message. The stone said that the missing articles had been taken by a certain man who, for fear of detection, had thrown them into the river. The stone said further that the articles would be brought back that night and left where they had been last seen. The next morning all the missing articles were found in the place where they had been last seen. Their appearance indicated that they had been under the water for several days.

Sacred stones had multiple purposes, as shown in a story about Lakota shaman Bear Necklace, as follows:

Charging Thunder said that his father [Bear Necklace], while on a buffalo hunt, was thrown from his horse, falling on a pile of stones and injuring his head. He lay unconscious almost all day and was found in the evening. His wound was dressed, and when he regained consciousness, he said that all the rocks and stones "were people turned to stone."

After this he found some stones. He could talk to them and depended on them for help. Once a war party had been gone two months; no news of them had been received, and it was feared that all were killed. In their anxiety the people appealed to Bear Necklace, asking him to ascertain by means of the sacred stones, what had become of the war party.

Sitting Bull was present and made an offering of a buffalo robe to the sacred stones and asked that he might become famous. Bear Necklace wrapped one of the stones in buckskin and gave it to him. Sitting Bull wore it in a bag around his neck to the time of his death, and it was buried with him. Bear Necklace then gave correct information concerning the absent war party. At that time he proved his power to give information by the help of the sacred stones, and afterwards the stones always told him the names of those who were killed in war, the names of the survivors, and the day on which they would return. This information was always correct.

To the Western mind, such stories are simply absurd. Stones are inanimate objects; how can they possibly communicate or travel on their own volition? Yes, that is one way of perceiving stones. But not the only way. And many tribal peoples around the world believe that every speck of creation is conscious and that certain persons are sensitive enough to perceive such consciousness and communicate with it. No empirical method can be used to prove either position, as consciousness, or the lack thereof, is beyond the measurements of any scientific instruments. It is a matter of belief, not science.

One of the most well-known and well-documented feat of shamans among the Algonquin peoples is the spirit lodge (or the "shaking tent" described by anthropologists). The first known Westerner to witness the spirit lodge was Samuel de Champlain in the early 17^th century; they continue to this day. For this ceremony, a special lodge is built, sometimes up to ten feet tall, out of heavy timber poles and covered with skins.

The medicine man goes enters, usually alone, and after blessing the enterprise by smoking a pipe, sings sacred songs, summoning the spirits to the ceremony. After some time, the lodge begins shaking, mostly at the top of the lodge, increasing in violence until the spirit enters it. Then strange voices are heard. At this point, the medicine man asks the spirits the questions that people have posed and receives answers from the spirits. The answers are often very detailed and include details of the immediate social and physical environment that could not be known beforehand by the medicine man. The lodge shakes extremely violently, sometimes to the point of tipping over – a feat that can last hours and requires a level of strength and endurance far beyond that of one man inside it. Once all the questions have been answered, the tent becomes quiet again, and the exhausted medicine man emerges.

Here is a skeptical Westerner’s description of a more or less typical “shaking tent” experience (narrated to J.G. Kohl), but with an interesting sequel:

Thirty years ago, said this white man, I was present at the incantation and performance of a "jossakid" (local name for a medicine man) in one of these lodges. I saw the man creep into the hut, which was about ten feet high, after swallowing a mysterious potion made from a root, he immediately began singing and beating the drum in his basket-work "chimney." The entire cage began gradually trembling and shaking, and oscillating slowly amid great noise. The more the necromancer sang and drummed, the more violent the oscillations of the long case became. It bent backwards and forwards, up and down, like the mast of a vessel caught in a storm and tossed on the waves. I could not understand how these movements could be produced by a man inside, as we could not have caused them from the exterior.

The drum ceased, and the jossakid yelled that the spirits were coming after him. We then heard through the noise and crackling and oscillations of the hut two voices speaking inside, one above, the other below. The lower one asked questions, which the upper one answered. Both voices seemed entirely different, and I believed I could explain them by very clever ventriloquism. Some spiritualist among us, however, explained it through modern spiritualism, and asserted that the Indian jossakids had speaking media, in addition to those known to us, which tapped, wrote, and drew.

Thirty years later (i .e. shortly before he met Kohl), the narrator came across a very old Indian, lying on his death-bed, whom he recognized to be the very jossakid who had given the strange performance described above. Since that date, this Indian had become a Christian, and, of course, had renounced his former pagan practices. Kohl's narrator sat down beside the dying Indian, and began to talk to him.

“Uncle,” he said to him, “Dost thou remember prophesying to us in thy lodge thirty years ago, and astonishing us, not only by thy discourse, but also by the movements of thy prophet lodge? I was curious to know it how it was done, and thou saidst thou hadst performed it by supernatural power, "through the spirits." Now thou art old, and hast become a Christian; thou art sick and canst not live much longer. Now is the time to confess all truthfully. Tell me, then, how and through what means thou didst deceive us?”

"I know it, my uncle," the sick Indian replied. "I have become a Christian, I am old, I am sick, I cannot live much longer, and I can do no other than speak the truth. Believe me, I did not deceive you at the time. I did not move the lodge. It was shaken by the power of the spirits. I only repeated to you what the spirits said to me. I heard their voices. The top of the lodge was full of them, and before me the sky and wide lands lay expanded. I could see a great distance about me, and believed I could recognize the most distant objects.”

Sometimes a shaman will make a demonstration to flummox the critics. A. Irving Hallowell wrote of an account in which two White witnesses to a spirit lodge ceremony declared it to be all fakery. This was communicated to the shaman who said that he would do the same the next evening and asked them to pay him $5 if he was able to dispel their doubts. A sturdy 40-pole lodge was constructed; the shaman demonstrated to the doubters its sturdiness. The shaman then stood outside the empty lodge’s door, took off his black broadcloth coat, folded it and shoved it into the lodge, which began shaking at once and voices were heard inside. Needless to say, the shaman was paid his $5.

A fairly common feature of the spirit lodge ceremony was to tightly bind the shaman beforehand and when the ceremony is over, the shaman walks out of the lodge free from the bonds and the loose sinew bonds are tied in innumerable knots which would have taken a single human many hours to accomplish.

The World We Used to Live In includes numerous other powers and abilities possessed by shamans, including the ability to communicate with animals, birds and plants; miraculously making plants grow or bear fruit; changing the weather; healing with plants and stones; materialize and dematerialize objects; moving impossibly huge boulders; handling live embers without injury; invulnerability to arrows and bullets; becoming invisible; temporarily animating inanimate objects; and producing anomalous objects or objects out of season. There is no way to determine how much of these exploits were trickery (personally, I believe that only a small percentage observed was faked) but if even 99% of it was trickery, what about the remaining 1%? How can a 17^th century shaman produce chunks of ice in July or give accurate details about the state of a war-party, to the man and the horse, that has been missing for two months? Unless the reader is a devout follower of scientific materialism, at least some of the things that Deloria describes in this book will blow the reader’s mind.

Deloria delves into a discussion of these seemingly miraculous (or at least super-human) abilities of the shamans of North America from various perspectives. Most importantly, however, he includes a description of the “native” beliefs about the nature of the world. The Omaha described their traditional views as follows:

An invisible and continuous life was believed to permeate all things, seen and unseen. This life manifests itself in two ways: first, by causing to move-all motion, all actions of mind and body are because of this invisible life; second, by causing permanency of structure and form, as in the rock; the physical features of the landscape mountains, plains, streams, rivers, lakes, the animal and man. This invisible life was also conceived of as being similar to the will power of which man is conscious within himself a power by which things are brought to pass. Through this mysterious life and power all things are related to one another, and to man, the seen to the unseen, the dead to the living, a fragment of anything in its entirety. This invisible life and power was called Wakonda.

The Muskogee stated that:

The power could be invoked by the use of charms and the repetition of certain formulae. 'By a word' wonderful things could be accomplished; 'by a word' the entire world could be compressed into such a small space that the medicine man who was master of the word could encircle it in four steps. It was power of this kind which was imparted to medicines, yet the source of this power was after all the anthropomorphic powers, which, at the very beginning of things, declared what diseases were to be and also appointed the remedies to be employed in curing them.

So, why did Vine Deloria Jr. write this book? Was it to show off the supposed spiritual powers of peoples who are now a faint glimmer of what they used to be? And if so, what value is there in that? In his introduction to the book, Deloria is clear that he sees these accounts as an antidote to the current trend of modernism that, “has prevented us from seeing that higher spiritual powers are still active in the world.” Further, his stand is that, “We need to glimpse the old spiritual world that helped, healed, and honored us with its presence and companionship. We need to see where we have been before we see where we should go, we need to know how to get there, and we need to have help on our journey.”

May this great work of Vine Deloria Jr. fulfill his intention and may it greatly exceed the reach that he had anticipated. Over the past couple of centuries peoples around the world have been forced (sometimes at gunpoint) to abandon their belief in a world full of spiritual beings and wonders and that humans can live in harmony with such beings, much to humanity’s benefit; and replaced it with a cynical, shallow world view that only acknowledges that something which is tangible to the senses is real and that there is no higher meaning to live than mere existence. No; there is more in heaven and earth than is described in all the scientific tomes; The World We Used to Live In, and other books like it, help to provide a glimpse of a world that still exists and that we can ourselves experience if we are willing to put in the hard work of breaking the illusion continuously being created by mainstream society and its institutions, and look within ourselves and sharpen our “inner senses” to see that there is far more to creation, and to ourselves, than is popularly believed.