Some Sign Will Be Seen: The Aurora Borealis at Black Elk’s Death

Abstract

Abstract:When the Lakota holy man Black Elk died in 1950, a spectacular display of the aurora borealis lit up the night sky. Eyewitness accounts recount vivid northern lights and echo oral history from nineteenth-century Lakota who gave explanations of the meaning of auroral phenomena. The reports of the 1950 aurora suggest that a massive, sporadic solar flare and subsequent coronal mass ejection were responsible for the event. News media reports, contemporaneous scientific observations, and solar observatory data confirm this hypothesis.