As you walk upon the sacred earth, treat each step as a prayer.
BLACK ELKAs you walk upon the sacred earth, treat each step as a prayer.
BLACK ELKThe visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds.
BLACK ELKAnd I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.
BLACK ELKOut 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 ELKEverything tries to be round.
BLACK ELKKnow the Power that is Peace.
BLACK ELKThe boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us; we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.
BLACK ELKSometimes dreams are wiser than waking.
BLACK ELKThey told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear’s uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
BLACK ELKWhen we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.
BLACK ELKAlso, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
BLACK ELKCrazy 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 ELKWe should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples.
BLACK ELKA good nation I will make live.This the nation above has said.They have given me the power to make over.
BLACK ELKOnce we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us.
BLACK ELKPerhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in differing ways.
BLACK ELK