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The boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.

Black Elk

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Black Elk
Age: 86 †
Born: 1863
Born: December 1
Died: 1950
Died: August 19
Heyoka
Medicine Man
Tribal Chief
Way
Saws
Men
Boys
Learned
Time
Taught
Like
Ways
Warriors
People
Learn
Warrior
Girl
Began
Young
Girls

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When you pray with this pipe, you pray for and with everything.
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Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a person is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
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But I think I have done right to save the vision in this way, even though I may die sooner because I did it for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and beautiful and good and you can see that I am only a pitiful old man after all.
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All things are our relatives what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.
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A good nation I will make live.This the nation above has said.They have given me the power to make over.
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Behold this day. It is yours to make.
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And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
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May you always walk in Beauty.
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I had a vision with which I might have saved my people, but I had not the strength to do it.
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Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.
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Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
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The Holy Land is everywhere.
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The power of the world always works in circles.
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Know the Power that is Peace.
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Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
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If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
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As you walk upon the sacred earth, treat each step as a prayer.
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And if the great fear had not come upon me, as it did, and forced me to do my duty, I might have been less good to the people than some man who had never dreamed at all, even with the memory of so great a vision in me.
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So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation's hoop I thrust it in the earth.
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And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.
Black Elk