Black Elk was nine years old when he went into a coma from a fevered illness, his parents called a medicine man to cure him, during his illness he experienced a great spiritual vision of the world. He saw that the hoop of his nation was one of many hoops, he saw the cooperation of all the hoops of all nations.
Black Elk says, "I saw myself on the central mountain of the world, the highest place, and I had a vision because I was seeing in the sacred manner of the world", "the center of the world is Harney Peak in South Dakota, "But the center of the world is everywhere."

He was a thirteen-year-old warrior at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, became the spiritual adviser and gift-giver of  his people and bore sad witness to the massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1890.

BLACK ELK HISTORY