 This limitation aside, Rice deeply studies his subject in great detail and his work, especially after reading Black Elk’s Story, is very helpful in gaining more insight into the life of Black Elk.
	From reading any book on the life of Black Elk a reader could discern that his life was quite complex.  In Black Elk Speaks Neihardt is able to write the story which Black Elk wished to tell and wished to be written about him, a note which must be noticed by any reader.  Indeed, one could stretch and skew details on one’s own life or exaggerate details to explain their own life in a way different from what a more objective writer may have written in a biography.  This aside, any comparison between Black Elk Speaks and Black Elk’s Story would find that Neihardt’s interview of Black Elk provides a much better narrative of the holy man’s life than Rice is able to provide in his work.  This can be attributed to two factors: the audience intended by each author and the authors themselves.
	John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks, unlike Black Elk’s Story, is intended for a general audience and not necessarily as a scholarly work.  In the early part of the 20th Century, books concerning stories of the “Wild West” and especially Native Americans were very popular.  Although Black Elk Speaks was originally published in 1932, it could be assumed that as the popularity of “Wild West” stories and stories of Native Americans was still ever-present in American Culture through the 1960s that this book was not only conceived as a way of telling the story of Black Elk but was written with the knowledge that the book would become popular to the general public and thus generate a substantial profit.  This aside, Neihardt seemed to have an interest in allowing Black Elk to tell his life’s story.  
	John G. Neihardt was a writer of mainly poetic works during the 20th Century.  He attended what was then Wayne Normal College (now Wayne State) in Wayne, Nebraska and developed an interest in poetry. (Nebraska state historical society).  Neihardt would begin writing poetry after graduating at the age of sixteen (nde.state.ne.us). As he began his interviews with Black Elk he did not have the idea of writing about the Sioux Holy man but “for no other reason than that he knew Crazy Horse” (Neihardt xxiv) as he was researching for his poems.  Neihardt had written a previous poetic works centering around the Sioux Chief Crazy Horse who was the second cousin of Black Elk, and Black Elk had “known the great chieftain well” (Neihardt xxiv).  While interviewing Black Elk in his research of the Plains Indian Wars, he describes the preface of the 1932 edition that “I was deeply impressed by the scope of [Black Elk’s] life experience” (Neihardt xx) and that after his initial short visit he returns a year later “for an extended visit, [in the hopes] that he might relate his life story to me in fulfillment” (Neihardt xx).state.ne.us).