Black Elk, known to his people as Heȟáka SápA, was only thirteen years old when he took part in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. As a young Lakota boy, he scaled a soldier during the chaos of the fighting, witnessing firsthand the bravery and confusion that defined that day. He was also the second cousin of the great war leader Crazy Horse, who played a decisive role in the battle, giving Black Elk a unique position from which to observe the events unfold. His account of the clash between the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors and the Seventh Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer offers a rare glimpse into one of the most important moments in American history.
No white man survived the encounter with Custer’s command. The battle ended swiftly in broad daylight. Crazy Horse, their steadfast leader, had already defeated General Crook’s forces on the Rosebud that day. He could have destroyed the soldiers entirely if he had called upon more warriors from their villages to set an ambush at dawn, as they camped in the dark after their defeat.
Earlier, he had driven back the cavalry that had attacked their village on the Powder River during a freezing March morning in the moon of the snowblind. From there he moved west to the Rosebud, where he repelled the soldiers who came to attack them, and finally to the valley of the Greasy Grass, their ancestral homeland, where they sought only to be left in peace. Two days before the battle, they set up camp in the valley along the south side of the Greasy Grass, just before the sun reached its peak. The village was vast, with countless teepees stretching across the land.
Upstream to the south were the Hunkpapas, followed by the Oglalas, the Minneconjous, the San Arcs, the Blackfeet, and the Cheyennes, with the Santees and Yanktonais farthest to the north. To the east, the Greasy Grass flowed swollen with snowmelt from the Bighorn Mountains, with timber lining its banks. From a hill, one could see the mountains to the south and west. Hills and bluffs rose across the river, with gullies cutting through the cliffs.
To the west were lower hills where they grazed and guarded their ponies, which were too many to count. A warrior named Rattling Hawk had been shot in the hip during the battle on the Rosebud but was healed by a medicine man named Hairy Chin. The day before the main battle, Black Elk had anointed himself and was about to swim with some boys when Hairy Chin called him to Rattling Hawk’s teepee, needing his help. Five other boys were already there, and he needed them to take on the guise of bears in the curing ceremony, as his power came from a dream of the bear.
He painted Black Elk’s body and face yellow with black stripes on either side of his nose, tied his hair to look like bear ears, and adorned his head with eagle feathers. As he did this, Black Elk remembered his earlier vision and felt suddenly lifted off the ground. In that moment he understood more than he could express and felt certain that some great misfortune was coming their way. He was filled with dread.
The other boys were painted entirely in red, with real bear ears on their heads. Hairy Chin, dressed in a real bear hide, began singing at the doorway. Two women entered, standing on either side of the injured warrior, one holding a cup of water, the other holding a kind of herb. As Black Elk looked at the cup, he tried to see if it contained the entire sky as it had in his vision, but he could not tell.
As the plant and cup were offered to Rattling Hawk, Hairy Chin continued to chant. Then they gave him a red cane, and he stood up immediately. The injured warrior, leaning on the sacred red stick, followed the women out of the teepee. The boys, pretending to be little bears, danced around him, growling, with feathers of different colors sticking out of their mouths as they performed the ritual.
Then Hairy Chin came out on all fours, looking very much like a bear. Rattling Hawk’s walking improved, and though he could not fight the next day, he recovered soon after. The boys went swimming to wash off the paint after the ceremony. When they returned, the villagers were dancing and telling stories of bravery from the battle with Three Stars on the Rosebud.
They were tasked with bringing the ponies closer to the village as dusk approached. By the time they finished, night had fallen, and the villagers continued to dance around fires, their celebrations unending. The boys wandered from one dance to another until they could no longer stay awake. At dawn, Black Elk’s father woke him to help graze their horses.
As they did, he warned Black Elk to put a long rope on one of the horses so they could easily catch it and secure the others. He stressed the importance of being watchful, urging him to keep an eye on the camp and return the horses quickly if trouble arose. Several boys tended to their horses together until the sun reached its peak and the heat became unbearable. They decided to cool off in the water, and Black Elk’s cousin offered to stay with the horses until they returned.
As Black Elk anointed himself with grease, he felt a strange sense of unease, as if something terrible was about to happen. Despite this feeling, he went with the boys to the water’s edge to the west of the village. Many people were digging turnips, and many others were already in the water by the time his cousin brought the horses down to drink. Suddenly, the crier’s voice rang out from the nearby Hunkpapa camp: “The chargers are coming!
They are charging! ” The cries echoed from camp to camp, all the way to the Santees and Yanktonais. The Oglala crier repeated the same lines, his voice growing more urgent. Everyone rushed to secure their horses, and Black Elk was lucky to have his nearby.
His older brother mounted a sorrel horse and rode quickly toward the Hunkpapas. Black Elk had a buckskin horse. When his father heard his brother’s cry and saw him riding toward the Hunkpapas without his pistol, he ran over, telling Black Elk to take the pistol from him and return it, then come back quickly. He also gave Black Elk his six-shooter, an heirloom from his aunt.
Black Elk grabbed the guns, mounted his pony, and went after his brother. Just beyond the Hunkpapa camp, a thick cloud of dust rose as the Hunkpapas, many still wet from the river, ran about in confusion. Out of the dust came the soldiers on their tall, powerful horses, firing their weapons. His brother, with his revolver in hand, yelled at him to turn back.
There was a patch of brushy timber just beyond the Hunkpapas where some warriors were gathering. He headed there, and Black Elk followed. Women and children were already fleeing downstream in large numbers. Looking back, Black Elk saw them all scrambling up a hillside.
When they reached the timber, many Hunkpapas were already there, and the soldiers were firing above them, making leaves fall from the trees where bullets hit. The women and children were running, the warriors were riding in on their horses, and Black Elk could not tell what was happening in the village below. It was all dust, screaming, and thunder in the woods and outside the Hunkpapa camp. They all shouted, “Be brave!
Don’t be like a woman! ” This, Black Elk believed, was when Gall stepped in to stop the Hunkpapas from fleeing. Black Elk stayed in the woods for a while, thinking about his vision. It gave him a sense of purpose, and he felt certain that the Army would be defeated and that his people were all Thunder Beings.
Then a loud cry rose over the dust: “Crazy Horse is coming! ” The arrival of Crazy Horse was signaled by the sound of eagle bone whistles and the shouting of “Hokah! ” like a howling wind from the north and west. The valley grew darker with dust and smoke, filled with shadows, cries, hoofbeats, and gunfire.
To his left, Black Elk could hear the soldiers’ horses with their iron-shod hooves retreating into the brush, with shooting breaking out everywhere. The horses eventually broke through the undergrowth, and Black Elk was surrounded by a whirlwind of activity as men and horses moved in and out of the area, heading upstream while shouting, “Hurry, move quickly! ” They were all mixed together in the noise and darkness as the troops ran upstream. Black Elk did not see much, but he did witness a Lakota warrior charging at a soldier who stayed behind and fought bravely.
The Lakota grabbed the soldier’s horse by the bridle, but the soldier shot him with a revolver. Being small, Black Elk could not push through to where the soldiers were, so he did not kill anyone at that point. Everything was dark and confusing, and there were too many people in front of him. Soon the soldiers and many Lakotas were all packed into the river, and Black Elk was in the water for a while.
Men and horses were tangled up and fighting in the river, making it seem like hail was falling. After they emerged from the water, people began stripping the dead soldiers of their clothes and wearing them. One soldier on the ground was still moving. A Lakota rode up and said to Black Elk, “Boy, get off and scalp him.
” Black Elk dismounted and began to scalp him. The soldier’s hair was short, and Black Elk’s knife was dull. The man was grinding his teeth, so Black Elk shot him in the forehead and then took his scalp. Many of the warriors were chasing the soldiers up a hill on the other side of the river, while everyone else was moving downstream.
On a distant hill above the Santee camp, there was a large cloud of dust with warriors darting in and out of it like swallows, and many guns were firing. Black Elk decided to show his mother his scalp, so he rode toward the hill where a group of women and children had gathered. On the way, he saw a beautiful young woman among a band of warriors heading toward the battle. She sang out, “Brothers, our allies have arrived!
Be strong, be fearless! ” As he made his way through the Oglala camp, he caught sight of Rattling Hawk sitting alone in his lodge, clutching a rifle and singing a sorrowful tune: “What can you do, brothers, that I cannot achieve? ” When Black Elk reached the women on the hill, they were all singing and making a tremolo to uplift the warriors across the river. When his mother saw his first scalp, she made a special tremolo just for him.
Black Elk stayed with his mother for a while, watching the dust clouds swirling on the hill across the river. Horses emerged from the dust with empty saddles. The thick dust from the battle made it hard to see, but they knew the soldiers were being defeated. Many boys around his age, some even younger, were there with their mothers and sisters, and they asked him to join them in the battle.
They mounted their ponies and set out. As they rode down toward the river, they saw gray horses with empty saddles plunging into the water. They reached the mouth of a gulch that led up into the bluff where the fighting was happening and crossed the Greasy Grass. By the time they arrived, most of the soldiers had fallen, many already dead, but some were still alive.
More boys had gathered by then, and they rode around shooting arrows at the soldiers. Black Elk found one soldier writhing with arrows in him and started to take his coat, but a man pushed him aside and claimed it for himself. Then he noticed something shiny hanging from the soldier’s belt. He pulled it out and found it was a round, bright yellow object that was very beautiful.
He wore it around his neck like a necklace. At first it ticked, but then it stopped. He kept it around his neck for a long time before he figured out what it was and how to make it tick again. The women gathered around, and they climbed to the top of the hill.
There, gray horses lay dead, some piled on top of soldiers and soldiers on top of horses. They did not see many of their own dead, as they had already been collected, but many of their men had been killed or injured. The dust from the battle made it difficult to see clearly, and it was hard to tell who was who. It did not seem like anyone knew which soldier was Custer, and Black Elk did not spot him.
He did see one soldier raising his arms and groaning, so he shot an arrow into his forehead, making his arms and legs twitch. He noticed some Lakotas trying to help another Lakota. When he got closer, he realized it was Black Wasu, the brother of Chase in the Morning. He had been shot through the right shoulder, with a bullet lodged in his left hip, as he was hanging off the side of his horse when he was hit.
They were giving him medicine. He was Black Elk’s cousin, and both his father and Black Elk’s father were so furious that they went and killed a soldier and mutilated his body. The soldier was corpulent, and the meat looked tempting, but they did not eat it. There was a young boy, younger than Black Elk, who asked him to scalp a soldier for him.
Black Elk did, and the boy ran off to show the scalp to his mother. Most of the warriors drove the other soldiers back to the hill where their pack mules were. After a while, Black Elk grew tired of searching around. The smell of blood was overwhelming, and he became weary of it, so he headed back home with a few others.
He was not sorry at all. He felt satisfied. The soldiers had come to harm their families and them, and this was their land. When he was in the brush with the Hunkpapas and the first shots were fired, he had a feeling that this would happen.
He believed his people were connected to the Thunder Beings in his vision and that the soldiers were foolish to come there. Everyone stayed up all night in the village. The next morning, another war party went back to the hill where the soldiers were, and the men who had been watching there all night returned home. Black Elk’s mother went along.
She rode a mare, with a little colt trotting beside her, following its mother. They could see the horses and pack mules up there, but the soldiers were well fortified at the base of the hill. On the west side of the Greasy Grass, there were some bullberry bushes. A big boy named Round Fool was running around the bushes.
They asked him what he was doing, and he said, “There’s a white man in that bush. ” And there was. He had hidden there when the other soldiers retreated to the hilltop and had been there all night. They began shooting arrows at him, and it felt like chasing a rabbit.
He crawled from one side of the bush to the other while they ran around firing their bows at him. At one point he cried out, “Ow! ” After a while, they set fire to the grass around the bushes, and he emerged running. Some of the warriors killed him.
When they climbed to the top of the hill where some of their men were stationed, they looked over. They could not see the soldiers lying in their defenses, but they could see the horses and pack mules, many of which were dead. When they went back down and crossed the river again, some soldiers fired at them, hitting the water. It was nearly dusk when Black Elk’s mother and he returned to camp on swift horses.
By then, their scouts had reported that more soldiers were approaching up the stream, so they decided to break camp before dark. They packed up and began heading up the Greasy Grass toward Wood Louse Creek in the Bighorn Mountains. They fled through the night, following the Greasy Grass. Black Elk’s mother tossed some puppies into the pony drag that his two younger brothers and he rode in.
They kept trying to crawl out, so he spent a lot of time putting them back, which meant he did not get much sleep. They arrived at a small dry brook by daylight, made camp, and feasted well. The meat had patches of fat in it. By midday they set off again and reached Wood Louse Creek at the base of the mountains, where they made camp.
There, a man with grievous wounds went into convulsions and kept repeating something that Black Elk did not understand. He eventually died, and they called that place the camp where that man died. That evening everyone became agitated and started shouting, “The soldiers are coming! ” Black Elk looked over and saw what seemed like troops coming their way, but it turned out to be some of their own men dressed in soldiers’ uniforms.
They were just having some fun. The scouts reported that the soldiers had not followed them and that everything was safe. Throughout the camp, there were large fires and scalp dances going on all night.