 The Sioux have been romanticized as well within American culture, with Sioux such as Sitting Bull joining traveling shows like Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and films made surrounding the history of the United States military and the Sioux such as Little Big Man. Other Sioux would become popular like Sitting Bull with William Cody’s Wild West Show; the Sioux Holy Man Black Elk would tour with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.  
	While not a military leader as the likes of the Sioux chiefs Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull, Black Elk is attached to the relations of the Sioux and the United States military. He fought in his early years against the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn and would be a major force in the adoption of the Ghost Dance by the Sioux in the late 1880s, which precipitated the massacre at Wounded Knee.  Indeed, Black Elk, as many other members of the great Sioux Nation, acutely affected the military policy of the United States during the late 19th Century.  Black Elk was the focus of many literary works throughout the 20th Century, chiefly of which is Black Elk Speaks, the autobiography of Black Elk transcribed by John G. Neihardt.  
	The chief source of information about Black Elk for any scholar would undoubtedly be his essential autobiography Black Elk Speaks.  Black Elk Speaks is written along similar lines to the essential autobiography of the Apache leader Geronimo in Geronimo: In His Own Words. Niehardt transcribes the story which Black Elk tells to Neihardt and wishes to have known.  While telling the story of the life of Black Elk though the tumultuous times of the late 19th Century, Black Elk Speaks also describes to the reader the life of the Sioux in a state of disarray as the number of whites in Sioux territory increases and the number of buffalo decrease.  It is during this period of decline for the Sioux that major events in Black Elk's life take place.  
	Another work tackling the story of Black Elk in a different manner is Black Elk’s Story by Julian Rice.  Rice, unlike Niehardt, was not able to interview Black Elk to write his work on the Sioux holy man as he was born in 1940, only ten years before Black Elk’s death.  Rice writes his book Black Elk’s Story as almost more of an anthropological view of Black Elk’s life than a literary one despite the fact that Julian Rice was a professor of English at Florida Atlantic University. (quote source).  The title he chooses for his book is almost misleading, as the author focuses most of his effort on analyzing the visions and mannerisms of Black Elk with little placed on the actual life of Black Elk.  For a reader or researcher’s benefit, it is almost imperative that they have read Niehardt’s Black Elk Speaks prior to reading Black Elk’s Story for an adequate understanding of Rice’s book. 