John G. Neihardt (January 8, 1881 – November 3, 1973) was an American writer and poet, amateur historian and ethnographer. Born at the end of the American settlement of the Plains, he became interested in the lives of those who had been a part of the European-American migration, as well as the Indigenous peoples whom they had displaced. His best-known work is Black Elk Speaks (1932), which Neihardt presents as an extended narration of the visions of the Lakota medicine man Black Elk. It was translated into Germ as Ich Rufee mein Volk (I Call My People) (1953). In the United States, the book was reprinted in 1961, at the beginning of an increase in non-Native interest in Native American cultures. Its widespread popularity has supported four other editions. In 2008 the State University of New York published the book in a premier, annotated edition. (Information from Wikipedia)
Articles in Western American Literature:
The Book That Would Not Die, by John Neihardt
John G. Neihardt and the American Epic, by Lucile F. Aly
Ethic and Metaphysic: A Study of John G. Neihardt, by W. E. Black
Black Elk Speaks: And So Does John Neihardt, by Sally McCluskey
Ethics of Polyphony: The Example of Black Elk Speaks, by Andreas Kriefall
Poetry and History in Neihardt’s Cycle of the West, by Lucile F. Aly
Western American Literature Research 