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I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.

Black Elk

It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death.
BLACK ELK

Country Death Native Real Understanding
Everything tries to be round.
BLACK ELK

Education Statistics Trying
I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead – and that one was myself.
BLACK ELK

Dead Except Lying People Saws
If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
BLACK ELK

Close Doing Everything Foolish
I had a vision with which I might have saved my people, but I had not the strength to do it.
BLACK ELK

might People Vision
Behold this day. It is yours to make.
BLACK ELK

Behold Inspirational Life
Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world….
BLACK ELK

Behind Crazy Dreamed Horse Hurt Nothing Real
A good nation I will make live.This the nation above has said.They have given me the power to make over.
BLACK ELK

Given Make Nations Over Said
But if the Vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet;for such things are of Spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.
BLACK ELK

Country Darkness Eye Men Native
Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth.
BLACK ELK

Circle Community Earth Live Together
But the Wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed.
BLACK ELK

Around Islands Legegd Little Smaler
It’s in the darkness of men’s eyes that they get lost.
BLACK ELK

Darkness Eye Lost Men
Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.
BLACK ELK

Country Honesty Inspirational Native True
And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
BLACK ELK

Breath Country Lightning Native
You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.
BLACK ELK

Anything Country Horse Native Summer Years
Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
BLACK ELK

Earth Prayer Steps

I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.

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I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.

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