Posted on 09/02/2015 4:54:50 PM PDT by TradicalRC
Secular historians may snicker at early Christians who insisted Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue was a vision of the Messiah, but the case for interpreting Black Elk’s vision that way is not so easy to dismiss. Raymond DeMallie, founder and director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute, has delved into the transcripts of what Black Elk originally divulged to Neihardt. DeMallie’s definitive study shows the association with Jesus in this culminating passage to be unavoidable. Black Elk also said that the transfiguring figure he saw had “holes in the palms of his hands.” In addition, Black Elk flatly asserted to Neihardt, “It seems to me on thinking it over that I have seen the son of the Great Spirit himself.” In short, Native America’s most famous vision quest culminated in a vision of Jesus; and Neihardt, universalist that he was, did not quite tell it like it was told to him.
How few of us are still aware of Pere de Smet’s heroic missionary work among Native Americans. May God bless you and yours!
We went to visit his grave in St. Louis and we could not find it. The keeper at the St. Louis cemetery did not know who he was.
We found out later that the ones who directed the removal of his remains and those of other Jesuit missionaries at Florissant had clumsily done it with backhoes in 2003. It is not known what percentage of remains were actually moved.
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