1. Black Elk in Europe
End of the vision?

2. Buffalo Bill Cody’s
Wild West Show
• Mythology of
Westward Migration
– Manifest Destiny
• Blackstone, Buckskin,
Bullets, and Business

3. Mythology of the Martyrdom of
General Custer
• Buffalo Bill
intentionally looked
like Custer
– Black Elk calls him
Pahuska (Long Hair)
– Battle of Little Big Horn
(Greasy Grass) is the
final act of the Show

4. Indians in the Wild West Show
• Sitting Bull
• Why does Black Elk join
the Show?
• Phillip Bigtree,
Mohawk

5. Travels with the Show
• Chicago, New York Madison Square Garden
• England
– Difficulties of Atlantic passage
• Meets “Grandma England” at her (Victoria’s)
Diamond Jubilee

6. Mexican Joe Show
• Misses the boat home
• Joins another Show and travels to Paris,
Germany and other places
• Dies in Paris for 3 days
– Visits home
– Homesickness
– Great trouble
• In Europe 1886-89

7. Ghost Dance “Messiah”
• New Treaty in 1889
– Lost half of remaining
land
• Wovoka in Mason
Valley, Nevada
– Paiute
– Jack Wilson
• Save the Indian
– Destroy the Wasichu
– Bring back the dead and
the Buffalo

8. Black Elk’s Ghost Dance Vision
• Ghost Dance takes Black Elk to the land of
the Dead
– Similar to Dog Vision
• Brings back the Ghost Shirt
• Ghost Dancing makes Wasichus afraid
– Why?

9. Butchering at
Wounded Knee
• Bad trouble coming
because of wasichu fear
• 7th Calvary (Custer’s outfit)
– Fear of Ghost Dance led to
massacre of
– Hotchkiss gun
• Big Foot’s band of elderly,
women and children
– Almost 300 died

10. Gatling Gun circa 1895

11. Reactions to Wounded Knee
“The nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and
what few are left are a pack of whining curs who
lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law
of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of
the American continent, and the best safety of the
frontier settlements will be secured by the total
annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not
annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit
broken, their manhood effaced; better that they
should die than live the miserable wretches that
they are.” Editor, Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, Dec.
1890

12. After Wounded Knee
• “…*W+e had better, in order to protect our
civilization, follow it up…and wipe these
untamed and untamable creatures from the
face of the earth.” Editor, Aberdeen Saturday
Pioneer, Jan. 1891

13. L. Frank Baum
• Wizard of Oz
• “Clown of Syracuse”
• Theosophist (Postive
Mind Cure), feminist,
magician, salesman,
writer of children’s
literature
• Indian hater?

14. Capitalism and Gift Exchange
• Wizard of Oz as
mythology of
monetary exchange
system
• Contrasted with Gift
exchange of Lakota

15. Indians of Bloomingdales 2005

17. Trip to Harney Peak
• Offering the pipe
• A little thunder and rain
• Site of Black Elk’s vision

19. Lakota Tradition resurgence

20. Deserted Churches on Pine Ridge
territory

21. Manderson, Pine Ridge, SD

22. Ghost Dance

23. Wounded Knee

24. Wounded Knee Memorial