Hilda Neihardt (1916–2004) was one of her father John G. Neihardt's "comrades in adventure," and at the age of 15 accompanied him as "official observer" to meetings with Black Elk, the Lakota holy man whose life stories were the basis for her father's book, Black Elk Speaks and for her own later works. She was born in Bancroft, Nebraska, on December 6, 1916, to her writer father and sculptor mother, Mona Martinsen. In 1920 her extended family moved to Branson, Missouri, in the Ozark Mountains, then to Springfield and on to St. Louis in Missouri as her father's work changed.