Newell grew up deep in the Colorado mountains south and west of Denver, inspired by his readings of Thoreau, Black Elk and Kerouac.
Hilda Neihardt (1916–2004) was one of her father John G. Neihardt's "comrades in adventure," and at the age of 15 accompanied him as "official observer" to meetings with Black Elk, the Lakota holy man whose life stories were the basis for her father's book, Black Elk Speaks and for her own later works.
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In the summer of 1930, as part of his research into the Native American perspective on the Ghost Dance movement, the poet and writer John Neihardt, already the Nebraska Poet Laureate, received permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to go to the Pine Ridge Reservation with his two daughters to meet an Oglala holy man and shaman named Black Elk.
Harney Peak is the site of the Sioux Native American Black Elk's "Great Vision" which he received when nine years old and the site to which he returned as an old man, accompanied by writer John Neihardt, who popularized the medicine man in his book Black Elk Speaks.
The Indiana University professor Raymond DeMallie, who has studied the Lakota by cultural and linguistic resources, published a book in 1985 including the original transcripts of the conversations with Black Elk, plus his own introduction, analysis and notes.
Frank Fools Crow (died 1989), Oglala Lakota spiritual leader, Yuwipi medicine man, and the nephew of Black Elk