Although only 13 years old in 1876, he was in the thick of the Battle of Little Big Horn in which he took his first scalp. Later a famed medicine-man and spiritual leader of the Oglala Sioux, he was foremost priest of the Ghost Dance in 1890. He adopted Miller as his son in 1939. He died in 1950 aged 87.
“My first adoptive Indian father was Black Elk, famed Oglala Sioux medicine-man and narrator of Jon G. Neihardt’s classic book, Black Elk Speaks.” – David Humphreys Miller
