The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux

Joseph Epes Brown recorded this account from Black Elk, the Oglala Lakota holy man, and this University of Oklahoma Press book presents Black Elk's own description of the seven sacred rites of the Oglala Lakota, including the vision quest and the origin of the sacred pipe from White Buffalo Calf Woman, as related directly to Brown. Its strength is that it preserves one respected Lakota elder's own account of these rites in considerable ceremonial detail, mediated through a recorder Black Elk himself chose to work with. Its limit is exactly that mediation, it is one Lakota elder's account as recorded and structured by an outside scholar in the mid-twentieth century, not a survey of Lakota ceremonial practice generally, so a claim about Lakota ritual beyond what Black Elk specifically described needs a broader source.