Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic (review)

Michael F. Steltenkamp's stated intention is to make a full portrait of the life of Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) accessible in one volume (p. xix). To this end, he rewrites the material found in his previous book, Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala (Norman, OK,1993), which focuses on Black Elk's years as a catechist. Steltenkamp also provides some historical background, summarizes Joseph Brown's The Sacred Pipe (Norman, OK, 1953), and fleshes out Black Elk's biography. He also includes some good photographs that were not included in the previous book, a brief chronology of Black Elk's life, and a "Note on Sources."

Although Steltenkamp seems to have moved toward recognizing that Black Elk's "visions were, ultimately, neither parochially Lakota or insularly Catholic" (p. 123), there is no doubt that he is still very concerned to produce a Black Elk who remained a "fervent catechist until the end" (p. 223). As in the previous work, he regards the testimony obtained through his interviews with Lucy Looks Twice, Black Elk's daughter, as an irrefutable bedrock on which to base his interpretation: "Instead of me projecting a bias onto Black Elk's experience, I simply recounted what was reported to me by those who knew him best" (p. xviii).

Steltenkamp, unfortunately, is willing to cut a few corners to get where he wants to go. In this book, as in the previous one, Looks Twice's account of her father's "conversion" is pivotal. According to Looks Twice, it was effected by the ejection of Black Elk by Joseph Lindebner, S.J., from a tipi where he was performing a healing ritual. In the previous book, Looks Twice says, "My father never talked about that incident,"¹ which at least strongly suggests that this is her story, not her father's. In this book, although Steltenkamp admits that "Black Elk's conversion might not have occurred in the manner he described to his daughter" (p. 94), it has become Black Elk's story. Black Elk's actual—and contradictory—story of a priest who was thrown from his horse and killed after interfering with one of his rituals is discounted as "probably not what Black Elk would have seriously asserted in 1931" (p. 92).

Similarly, it is important to Steltenkamp to play down Black Elk's continuing commitment to the nativist cultural ideals of the Ghost Dance and his continual usage of the symbolism of the flowering stick, which was central to the Ghost Dance. In his account of the ghost shirt, Steltenkamp says, "Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, Black Elk was not the shirt's originator" (p. 62). Although that is probably true as a matter of historical fact, it is also misleading, as it glosses over the fact that Black Elk stated flatly in the Neihardt interviews, "So I started the ghost shirt."² He also plays down (pp. 142-44) the tension with Father Joseph Zimmerman and some of the other Jesuits created by the publication of Black Elk Speaks (New York, 1932).

Scholars will continue to be frustrated with Steltenkamp's refusal to seriously engage either his critics or their interpretations of Black Elk's religion, which are generally dismissed in a single sentence. Indeed, when one reads statements such as "The Lakota sun dance was outlawed in the 1880s, but this prohibition was not enforced until 1904" (p. 181), it raises the question of whether Steltenkamp has read the secondary literature.

There are dozens of unattributed assertions of fact. For example, "A researcher found only one person who claimed to be a patient of Black Elk" (p. 87). This raises the questions of who was the researcher, when was the research done, how was it done, and where was it published. The overwhelming impression left by the book is that Steltenkamp is still passionately engaged in fighting the battles of the past. Despite his knowledge, he...