Nicholas Black Elk
“History, like a slightly mad playwright, sometimes casts a man in a key role in the human comedy, but a role whose real meaning is hidden until the final curtain is rung down.” - Arline Boucher
A quote like that demands to be animated with an example - and here it is:
As a youngster of twelve, or thirteen years of age, Black Elk (c. 1863-1950) fought alongside Crazy Horse and his fellow Native Americans against General George Custer and the Seventh Cavalry on the banks of the Little Bighorn - admittedly killing two US soldiers in the conflict of 1876.
In the late 1880s he traveled through the U.S. and Europe as a performer in Buffalo Bill Cody’s “Wild West” show. Left in London by mistake, he was arrested as a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case, but eventually released.
Back in South Dakota he became widely known and respected as a medicine man and a mystic to the Lakota.
Early in the twentieth century he became Catholic. His conversion journey started when he was reprimanded for praying Lakota (tribal) prayers over an ill Catholic boy. The reprimand came from a Jesuit priest who had come to anoint the boy. In short order Black Elk came to the realization that the Jesuit’s prayers were more efficacious than his own and he began to take instruction from the missionary priest.
He was received into the Church on December 6, 1904 at age 39, baptized “Nicholas.”
In 1907 he became a Catechist in a role treated then much as Permanent Deacons are today. He traveled the Great Plains by horse (his was named “Bologna”) and buggy, with or without priests who were few in the Plains.
Traveling hundreds of miles over the years he established churches, wrote pastoral letters, established sodalities, taught people to pray and prayed with them, directed retreats, bolstered the faith, and brought hundreds into the Church. (Sounds a bit like St. Paul, as someone has opined.)
Today, this Lakota medicine man, mystic, and missionary is being considered for canonization. His cause, opened in 2017, was put forth by Archbishop Charles Chaput, then archbishop of Philadelphia.
All of this history is included in a presentation of his life produced by the Lay Division of St. John Vianney Seminary of Denver; a great introduction to Nicholas Black Elk, who is now considered a Servant of God by the Church.
Here are additional resources if you’re interested in learning more:
The website of his cause for canonization: https://blackelkcanonization.com/
From Catholic Rural Life: https://catholicrurallife.org/nicholas-black-elk-holy-man-american-catechist/
His letters in the archives of the Rapid City Diocese:
https://www.rapidcitydiocese.org/black-elk-letters/
