The first time Black Elk died, he was nine years old.

He collapsed in the dust like a broken twig, his body burning with fever. His mother prayed.  But for twelve days, he lay motionless. Unbeknownst to his tribe, however, somewhere behind his eyes, he was riding with thunder.

In his vision, the sky cracked open. Six grandfathers came riding down from the clouds on horses made of lightning and storm. They gave him gifts — a sacred bow, a healing herb, and a command: “You shall walk the road of two worlds. One to fight. One to heal.”

When he woke, he did not speak of it. Not yet. He was too young to be having visions.  But he was also too old to pretend it was nothing.

Years passed. He hunted, learned the old songs, and watched the soldiers tighten their grip around the Plains like a noose. By twelve, he had seen the white man’s hunger turn rivers red. He rode to war with his relatives and fought at Little Bighorn, galloping through black-powder smoke, not just to kill — but to carry the wounded away from the dying.

He remembered the screams. The torn flesh. The men who called for their mothers, who could not hear or help them.

After the battle, he burned cedar for the dead and sang their names into the wind.

More years passed and the world shrank. The herds were gone. The people were starving.

He left the Plains for the stage — Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show - a painted imitation of the life he had recently buried. In London, Paris, and New York, he rode horses in arenas while strangers cheered for feathers and fictions. He saw gaslights, castles and shook hands with the Queen. But each night, when he slept in silence, the sacred horses from his vision came back. They didn’t applaud. They waited.

When he finally returned home, the old world was ash. His people were scattered and sick. He remembered his duty.

He became a heyoka — a sacred clown, a healer who walks backward into the storm. He didn’t wear a uniform or carry a rank. He carried a pipe. He carried songs. He carried bones. He treated wounds with roots, fever with prayer, and grief with silence.

And then came Wounded Knee. Snow on the ground. Gunfire in the morning. Women and children falling like dry leaves.  Treating those he could and sitting momentarily with those he couldn't.

“I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was broken. But I also saw that it could be mended.”

He had lived as a warrior. He had healed as a medicine man. And when there were no more battles, he stood between worlds — one foot in the smoke, the other in the dream — trying to stitch together what the rifles had torn apart.

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