I think that the production of Black Elk Speaks ties into our question of the influences on the American Indian Myths and Legends text we are reading for class. Black Elk speaks is the life story of a Lakota holy man who lived during the Indian Wars. This particular book is the most popular books pertaining to Native American religion. Through the events in the story he is part of the traditional Lakota (a group under the category of Souix) religious tradition which involves such things as sweat lodges, Sun Dances, animal calling songs for hunting, and animal visions. However, at the time that the story was dictated to the writer, Black Elk was a devout Catholic missionary. The likelihood that his Christian beliefs impacted his telling or interpretation of his own life story is great even though he does not mention his conversion. I would propose that similar changes in the lives of the people dictating the stories in American Indian Myths and Legends has important but unidentifiable sway over the telling of the myths. Also, we have to at least be aware of the changes that occur between dictation and writing of the stories. For Black Elk Speaks, in response to interviews by John Neihardt Black Elk, who only spoke Lakota, dictated to his son who translated sentence-by-sentence into English. The English text was recorded in short hand by Black Elk’s daughter and then typed into a manuscript. From that typed manuscript Neihardt rewrote the entire text into a more literary and shortened version for publishing. Researchers such as Demallie went back and tracked changes from the original version. The premier edition of Black Elk Speaks notes the changes and additions that Neihardt made to the text. In some cases Neihardt has added things that are in the voice of Black Elk that make the story more literary but are not accurate to the original telling. Again, I would propose that something similar is happening with the myths in the collection text. It is highly unlikely that the editors spoke all the languages tied to the stories or that the speakers all spoke English so at the very least there is a degree of separation through the translator. I think that what is probably lost is a way of thinking that is tied to speech patterns. The way that we articulate an idea is important to its meaning and sometimes the connotations of phrases are lost in translation.
Black Elk and Elk in 1887
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