Brief Summary Of The Book Black Elk Speaks

The read to change a thousand minds Reading “Black Elk Speaks” is an interesting task. The book shows you the perspective of a native american man who witnessed everything. A man who lived through america’s forceful expansion into native territory, lived through both world war one and world war two. The book “Black Elk Speaks” is the story of Black Elk’s life, told to a white man. As I read the book, it was as if he was reciting the story to me, and some parts struck me as weird, amazing, or horrible. The first part of the book that struck me was especially horrible to me. This first quote was when Black Elk talks about how the Lakota nation was once prosperous, “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 6)” The reason this struck me was because of how well he explains the American expansion into Native American territory. It tells how Americans pushed into the Native’s land, through lies and deceit.

The second quote comes from the section when Black Elk talks about an old Lakota holy man, called Drinks Water. Black Elk says, “he dreamed the four-leggeds were going back into the earth and that a strange race had woven a spider’s web all around the Lakotas. And he said: “When this happens, you shall live in square grey houses, in a barren land, and beside those square grey houses, you shall starve. (Black Elk 7)” This part gave me mixed feelings. The most prevalent of those feelings was amazement. The reason for this was that Drinks Water almost perfectly describes what happens to the Lakota nation many years after Drinks Water dies. The Americans come over and weave a web of treaties and lies around the Lakota and force them into