This is by far the longest chapter in the book and it presents the central event of Black Elk’s life, his vision. It was common among many Indian tribes, including the Sioux, to induce a vision by means of fasting and sweating, at the time of initiation into adulthood. What Black Elk experiences here is different. The vision came to him, rather than being induced, indicating that he is singled out to receive something extraordinary. It is important that other special individuals in the band, holy men and medicine men, recognize the unique experience of Black Elk and support him in claiming the tribal role that the vision directs him to. Black Elk’s vision is partly apocalyptic, that is, it deals with the end of history or the human race in the imaginable future. Apocalyptic visions are not unusual during a time of crisis in a culture; historically, concerns that the world as it is known is about to end have even been precipitated by the turn of a century or of a millennium, such as the Y2K scare in the late 1990s. The Judeo-Christian tradition also features an apocalyptic phenomenon, especially the concept of the final judgment or judgment day as it is represented in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Black Elk’s vision presents a condensed history of mankind, from its innocent and blissful beginnings, similar to a garden of Eden, through the difficult present and horrific near-future, into a final return to prosperity and happiness similar to its beginning state.
The vision comprises a coherent system of images (an iconography) that have commonly understood meaning among the Sioux. The numbers four and twelve have major significance, for example. The number 12 is used in the number of virgins, horses, and bison. There are four directions (north, south, east, and west), four seasons, four ages of a person’s life, and four ages (ascents) of tribal history. Different colors and qualities, as well as sacred objects are associated with the four directions that mark out the four quarters of the world, as follows:
NORTH
white
winter
white horses
white giant’s wing
herb
death
SOUTH
yellow
summer
buckskin horses
sacred hoop
flowering stick
maturity
EAST
red
spring
sorrel horses
daybreak star
pipe
youth
WEST
black
fall
black horses
cup of sky
bow
old age
It is apparent that the circle shape is sacred as well. Like many American Indian tribes, the Sioux did not use the wheel for practical purposes until they began to adopt the technology of the whites. For example, the “pony drag” that Black Elk frequently refers to, a kind of horse-drawn sled used to move people and equipment, was used instead of a wagon or cart with wheels. For Black Elk, the number four denotes a circle, not a square, as the four directions denote the earth. The sacred hoop of his nation that he refers to is the integrated and united community of his people, imagined as within a circle. The base of the tepee is circular, and an encampment of tepees was usually arranged in a circle. Black Elk’s vision of the horses in the four different directions has visual similarities to a mandala, a circular design with geometric components originally used in Hinduism and Buddhism to express spiritual wholeness.
The cup that contains the sky, the sacred pipe, the four-rayed herb, and the flowering stick are sacred objects that will recur in Black Elk’s later visions. He will incorporate them into his healing practices and the rituals he performs for the community as a holy man. The bison, which the Sioux discovered on the plains when they migrated from the woodlands of the upper Midwest in the eighteenth century, and horses, introduced by the Spanish in the early sixteenth century, were sacred animals to the Sioux, as were eagles. The eagle might almost be considered a totem for Black Elk—an animal that is especially significant to him. He is given the name Eagle Wing Stretches, and throughout the rest of the narrative, he reports feeling pulled back into the world of his vision when he hears the whistle of an eagle.
Black Elk’s vision foreshadows the destiny of the Sioux, who were once prosperous and free but who now, with the coming of the whites, have lost their sense of community, their coherence. As his story proceeds, the accuracy of this vision is revealed, which may raise questions as to whether Black Elk has shaped his vision in hindsight. That is a question that simply cannot be answered; the narrative asks the reader to accept the validity of mystical experience. How much Neihardt’s editing and Black Elk’s conversion to the Catholic faith later in his life influenced the description of the iconography of his vision is difficult to know. Certainly, its number symbology can be compared to that of the Judeo-Christian tradition; the symbolic objects (the cup, the flowering stick) have even been compared to designs in the Tarot deck. Perhaps the early psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who theorized that certain symbols and images (archetypes) have meanings common to all human beings, however unconscious we may be of them, advanced the more accurate interpretation.
