Neihardt, << NY hahrt, >> John (1881-1973), was an American author known for his poetry and fiction about Native Americans. His major work is a five-part epic poem called The Cycle of the West. It describes how white settlers conquered the Native Americans of the Great Plains during the 1800’s. The epic consists of The Song of Hugh Glass (1915), The Song of Three Friends (1919), The Song of the Indian Wars (1925), The Song of the Messiah (1935), and The Song of Jed Smith (1941). Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks (1932), a biography of a Sioux medicine man, became his most widely read book.
John Gneisenau Neihardt was born on Jan. 8, 1881, near Sharpsburg, Illinois. He lived with the Omaha tribe in Nebraska from 1901 to 1907. Many of the themes in his works reflect his experiences among the Omaha and other tribes of the Great Plains. In 1921, Neihardt was named poet laureate of Nebraska. From 1926 to 1938, he was literary editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Neihardt served as poet-in-residence at the University of Missouri from 1949 to 1966. He died on Nov. 3, 1973.
