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About Black Elk-Neihardt Park
Black Elk-Neihardt Park in Blair, Nebraska, is a city park named for Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota, and John G. Neihardt, Nebraska’s Poet Laureate. Neihardt is the author of Black Elk Speaks, which he wrote after a series of interviews with Black Elk in 1931 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where Black Elk lived. >>
More about Black Elk Bill Thomsen Prof. Thomsen became acquainted with Dr. Neihardt in the 1970s, and
it was Neihardt who suggested that Thomsen illustrate scenes from Black
Elk Speaks. The pastels that Thomsen created were subsequently
translated into the mosaics in this park. In this vision, he said, he saw the universe as a hoop holding all living things. The hoop was bisected from east to west by the black road, the road of worldly difficulties, and from south to north by the red road of spiritual understanding. A sacred tree, full of leaves, blooms, and singing birds, grew where the roads cross, Black Elk said, and “that place is holy.” >> More about the Tower of the Four Winds As an adult Black Elk had this vision again at the time of the Ghost Dance, shortly before Wounded Knee. “Then they led me to the center of the circle,” he said, “where once more I saw the holy tree all full of leaves and blooming. But that was not all I saw. Against the tree there was a man standing with arms held wide in front of him. . . . I could not tell what people he came from. He was not a Wasichu [white man] and he was not an Indian. His body was strong and good to see, and it was painted red. . . .While I was staring hard at him, his body began to change and became very beautiful with all colors of light, and around there was light. He spoke like singing: ‘My life is such that all earthly beings and growing things belong to me. . . .’” (Quotations are from Black Elk Speaks.) Pedestal Mosaics
Four smaller mosaics on pedestals with Prof. Thomsen’s interpretations of Black Elk’s descriptions of the four quarters of the world stand – in north, east, south, and west positions -- along a concrete path in the shape of a hoop representing Black Elk’s “hoop of the world”; a cottonwood tree (cottonwoods were considered sacred by the Lakota) grows near the center of this hoop. >> More about the the Pedestal Mosaics
Interpretive Garden The park was established by the city of Blair as “Black Elk-Neihardt
Park” in 1974. The picnic pavilion was dedicated in 1976, this country’s
bicentennial year, and the Tower of the Four Winds was dedicated in 1987.
The Interpretive Garden was dedicated in October 2007.
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