Black Elk

Black Elk, A Visionary?

When reading this bear in mind that it was written for a modern college course in history. It was necessary to take a politically correct position in the paper, but at the same time I managed to bring a few pertinent facts to light in respect to the reality of 19th Century European-American/American-Indian relations and how that relationship tends to be viewed today in the context of political correctness. What I mean by this is that Black Elk's visions were interpreted by a white American and then bent or spun into a series of allegedly profound and symbolic messages meant to bolster the derived concept of the "noble savage." To make a long story short, much ado has been made over the last 140 years seeking to explain the victimization of the Native American at the hands of Whites in such a way as to suggest that somehow the two cultures could have coexisted alongside one another peacefully. This is just pure fantasy. Sure, it sounds nice, but the fact of the matter is that the two cultures WERE diametrically opposed to one another in just about every possible way - this isn't something the modern American likes to think about, but nonetheless it's true...

continued @ Curt Maynard's New West blog