JOHN G. NEIHARDT was born in
1881, and moved to Nebraska when he was a boy. He was tremendously precocious, graduating
from
Wayne State College at the age of 16. He lived during an era when the Indian Wars and
pioneer
events that he wrote about were in living memory. Most famously, he talked with Nicholas
Black
Elk, who had been present at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and arrived shortly after the
massacre at Wounded Knee. Neihardt published these conversations as Black Elk Speaks,
which today remains his most famous work. Throughout his long life he published poetry,
stories, essays, reviews, and dramas. His five book epic poem The Cycle of the West
is his best known original work, and he published lyric poems as a young man.
Neihardt also
worked as a professor at the University of Missouri. He was designated the Nebraska Poet
Laureate in perpetuity in 1921 by an act of the Nebraska legislature.