Despite Black Elk's holiness and healing powers, which mark him as a rare individual, and despite the fact that he is a brave warrior and hunter, he displays a wide range of ordinary human feelings, too. Illness and injury to others saddens him, he rejoices in the growth of new grass in the spring, and he is homesick while in Canada and while touring Europe with the Wild West Show. Black Elk talks about a Parisian girlfriend and her family, but doesn't mention the women he later married or his children. He enjoys feasting, singing, and dancing. The most traditional activities of the tribe, such as hunting bison and cutting tepee poles, define his best times.
In his interaction with whites, usually in the person of U.S. Cavalry Soldiers, Black Elk shows himself to be a man of integrity, honesty, and shrewd judgment. He sees his first white man at Fort Robinson when he is ten years old and thinks only that he looks sick (because of his paleness). Soon, however, he finds himself, with all the Sioux, entrenched in a genuine territorial war with the whites. Throughout this process, Black Elk maintains his sense of fairness: The Indian wanted nothing, he says, but to stay on the land he had lived on for centuries; the Indian did not want to make war on the whites just for the sake of making war. The treaty-making history of the Sioux with the U.S. Government clarifies that even after the Sioux had ceded Plains territory, they were robbed of more land in repeated violation of treaty terms. Black Elk's values, reflective of his tribe's, are fairness and honesty: He notes that the U.S. Government never compensated the Indians for confiscated horses and guns, despite the government's promise; the U.S. Government did not pay the Indians for the territory they annexed; and U.S. Soldiers murdered their leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Throughout his narrative, the whites' greed for gold, for land, and even for bison bemuses Black Elk. However, Black Elk judges people individually rather than on the basis of race, describing his Parisian girlfriend and her family as good and caring people, for example. He reacts similarly to Queen Victoria and Buffalo Bill — even though they are white, too. He contends that the Crow Indians, on the other hand, are horse thieves and never to be trusted.
