American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION The issue of Black Elk‘s Christianity has been, and continues to be, the focus of recent scholarship. His statements to different individuals at various times in his life have enabled him to be all things to all people, for depending on what source is studied one finds a Catholic dogmatist, a Lakota-Christian syncretist, or a Lakota traditionalist. Note, respectively, the following examples: In a letter to the Catholic Herald, November 2, 1911, Black Elk stated, “Perhaps you can not live lives split in two,which does not please God. Only one church, one God, one Son, and only one Holy Spirit-that way you have only one faith, you have only one body, and you have only one life and one spirit,’’and, similarly, in 1934, after the publication of Black Elk Sjmks, “Now I have converted and live in the true faith of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” In contrast, Frank Fools Crow says that Black Elk “had decided that the Sioux religious way of life was pretty much the same as that of the Christian churches, and there was no reason to change what the Sioux were doing. We could pick up some of the Christian ways and teachings, and just work them in with our own, so in the end both would be better.” And, finally, Ben Black Elk related that near the end of his father’s life their conversations were about the old ways and that Black Elk felt he may have made a mistake, that traditional religion may have been better for the people. Until Clyde Holler’s 1995 study, Black Elks Religion: Catholicism and the Lakota Sun Dunce, scholars’ interpretations of Black Elk’s religious beliefs have been divided, and their final positions have reflected their respective disciplinary or religious concerns. Raymond J. DeMallie, William K. Powers, and Julian Rice lean toward the view of Black Elk as a traditionalist who turned to Catholicism for practical purposes, as a matter of expediency in helping the people of his community; Paul Steinmetz and Michael Steltenkamp, both Jesuits, see Black Elk as making a sincere conversion, one based on the supposition that some form of Christianity is the fulfillment of the Lakota religious tradition. Holler commends Steltenkamp’s recent (1993) book, Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala, with providing a needed corrective to the one-sided, traditionalist portrayal of Black Elk that has grown out of Black Elk Speaks, but criticizes Steltenkamp for “falling prey to the very either/or he cautions against.”