Black Elk begins telling Neihardt his life story, ending this chapter with an account of his first vision at the age of five. He relates the events of his early childhood in the context of increasing tension between American Indians and the whites who wanted to settle the West. He introduces two older friends who interrupt his story to supply some of the details that he does not know or has forgotten.
Black Elk is an Ogalala Lakota, born in the Moon of the Popping Trees during the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed (December 1863). Three years later, his father was wounded in the Battle of the Hundred Slain (the Fetterman Fight). During the first three years of Black Elk’s life, his tribe was increasingly embattled with the white man, who was motivated by greed for gold and land. He compares that to the ancient past of the Indians, when animals and human beings lived together in harmony. Black Elk introduces and invites his older friend, Fire Thunder, who fought in the Battle of the Hundred Slain, to describe that battle. Fire Thunder explains that, fearful of encroaching white settlement, Chief Red Cloud organized a victorious Indian attack on white soldiers in December 1866. He describes a scene of great destruction in which even a surviving dog was shot to death with arrows. Black Elk resumes his description of his family’s journey west, away from the white man and their encampment. Hunting was poor, and people suffered from snowblindness during this cruel winter. When summer came, they moved again, and Black Elk recalls watching his five- and six-year-old friends play war games on horseback. Fire Thunder describes a second battle that took place in August 1867: The Indians suffered heavy losses in the Wagon Box Fight at the hands of white men using breech-loading Springfield Rifles. Black Elk’s friend Standing Bear confirms the location of their camp that winter. Black Elk began to hear voices the following summer, when he was four years old, and the voices frightened him. When he was five, at the time his grandfather gave him his first bow and arrows, Black Elk had a vision in which two men appeared in the sky singing a sacred song. Although he liked thinking about the vision, Black Elk was afraid to tell anyone about it.
