“A farewell to Wahacanka Luta—the Delta bluesman, medicine man, and spiritual guide who found his final home in the sacred Paha Sapa.”
Jesse Graves (1949 –2023), born Michael Floyd, was an American blues guitarist and singer devoted to preserving the acoustic Delta blues traditions of the 1920s and 1930s. Emerging from the East Coast folk revival of the 1960s, Graves was encouraged by legendary bluesman Johnny Shines, who told him, “Son, you got bluesman shoes, and that’s enough,” prompting Graves to seek out masters like Reverend Gary Davis and Son House. Graves shared stages with Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Little Feat, and The J. Geils Band. Graves was devoted to Native American spirituality, participating in Sun Dances and Vision Quests.
Jesse spoke and wrote the Lakota language and said, “Every time I picked up a guitar and played professionally, I always dedicated it to the Great Mystery.” He spent his final years living in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, where he was known by his Lakota name Wahacanka Luta, meaning Red Shield.
In July 2025, during the ash-spreading ceremony of Jesse Graves in Spearfish, South Dakota, I had a deeply spiritual and metaphysical experience. Jesse was a blues musical mentor to me and a friend. He passed on Native American spirituality to me as he was a lifelong practitioner. He always told me he was a medicine man. I learned so much about life and music through him, as he played with many blues originators and directly learned from them.
Jesse’s real name was Michael K. Floyd, and his Lakota Sioux name, Wahacanka Luta, translated to Red Shield. The purpose of my article is to show the immense, sacred power the Black Hills area holds and the great spiritual strength of Jesse Graves. I’m passing on my powerful experience to inspire others to visit the Black Hills of South Dakota and learn that the area is the spiritual heartbeat and pulse of the entire United States.
After Jesse passed away in December 2023 in Belle Fourche, SD, his good friend held onto his ashes. It took time to coordinate the ash-spreading ceremony due to scheduling conflicts and I wasn’t sure it would ever happen. Eventually, a July 2025 date was booked.
During the final part of my flight to Rapid City, I started feeling the pull of the Black Hills. From the airplane window, I had a clear view of rolling green mounds and formations. They seemed to go on forever. The clouds also created a unique shading that covered the hills, darkening everything with a tint. This was the outskirts of the Black Hills and high above in an airplane, I could feel the strong vortex pull of powerful energy. It felt like the plane had entered another world.
A quick note: the Black Hills aren’t black. They are deep green and when viewed from a distance, a dark green color resembles black. Also, as you go deeper into the area, the heart, metamorphic granite rock ranges fill the landscape. Ponderosa pines layer the gaps between the rocks. The Lakota Sioux call the Black Hills “Paha Sapa,” which translates to the heart of all that is.
As soon as I landed in Rapid City, I picked up my rental car and immediately headed to the store for supplies and food. I would only be in town for a day and a half and I had a lot of terrain to cover. I then proceeded to Mountain View Cemetery where Jesse purchased a grave plot back in the 1980s. Near the end of his life he decided to be cremated instead of buried. I still wanted to pay my respect.
Upon finding his gravestone, I parked the car and carried guitar picks and fingerpicks, two guitar slides, a crystal stone, sweetgrass, a dried carnation flower, a Chicago blues shot glass, and a bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey, Jesse’s favorite brand. I wanted to pay my respects and create a little shrine for his gravesite.
After arranging everything in the correct order, I poured a shot of Wild Turkey in the shot glass. Immediately, the rental car alarm went off. It would not stop and the lights kept blinking red. The alarm started without me even touching the car keys. As I pushed the alarm button on the key to turn it off, the alarm and lights kept flashing. I walked closer to the car pushing the alarm button and nothing seemed to work. As soon as I was a few feet from the car, mysteriously, the car alarm turned off. I walked back to the grave, took photos, and rested for a few minutes to take everything in.
As I looked at my phone to view the recently captured photos, that last photo was completely red with black tints. This all seemed so bizarre and seemed to defy human logic. I took a few more minutes to compose myself and really think about what had just taken place. I concluded the car alarm, the blinking red lights, and the mysterious red photo on my phone were Jesse—Wahacanka Luta, Red Shield—thanking me for visiting and giving him a shot of Wild Turkey. I then took the rest of the bottle and poured it throughout the grass surrounding his headstone.
I then headed to Bear Butte State Park in Sturgis, SD. Bear Butte is called Mato Paha, Bear Mountain. It’s a very sacred mountain where many great Indian leaders have performed their vision quests. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull received their visions here. Jesse did, too. In the Lakota language, taking a vision quest is called Hamblecha. While driving to Sturgis, I had the radio on. It felt as if Jesse took the radio over and communicated through it. Two songs that played back-to-back included “Don’t Fear The Reaper” and “Dust In The Wind.” The songs portrayed messages of death, resurrection, and the body leaving the Earth. After this, “Urgent” by Foreigner played. Ironically, Foreigner was one of Jesse’s favorite bands. None of this seemed like coincidence.
As Bear Butte came into view, the sheer size and beauty of it overwhelmed me. I knew I would only hike for a short distance as it was blistering hot out and I had to get back to check into my hotel. I walked up the mountain for a quarter of a mile, took photos, and saw prayer ties attached to trees. The mountain felt like a giant pyramid, a meridian point. The vortex of energy felt like something deeper was going on inside and underneath it. I wanted to stay longer, meditate, and really tune in, but I just didn’t have time. I drove back to my hotel in Rapid City to prepare for the next day.
The next morning as I ate breakfast, the weather looked ominous. I set out to meet two of Jesse’s friends in Spearfish and drive to Crowes Peak to spread his ashes. Upon getting on the highway, I-90 West, there were thin black strings of clouds that connected from the sky to the ground. They were interspaced through the horizon line and across the left and right sides of the highway. It was very surreal and I had never seen anything quite like it. I turned the car radio on and an emergency broadcast for extreme hail played. This was troubling. Out of nowhere, a giant thunderbolt soared through the entire left skyline. The bolt was deep golden yellow yet seemed to possess all the colors of the rainbow inside it. Again, I had never seen anything like this before.
Hail heavily started falling from the sky and I became nervous. It ferociously pounded the car, and I couldn’t see anything in front of me. I was convinced every window in the car was going to shatter. I brought the car down to 3 mph and still couldn’t see anything. I prayed and thought if this is how I am going to go, Mother Nature taking me is a great way to go. A few minutes later, the skyline magically cleared. By the time I made it to Spearfish, everything was calm. Weather in the Black Hills can change in a moment’s notice.
I met Jesse’s friends; we talked and continued onward to Crowes Peak. Crowes Peak is a 5,760-foot mountain located near Spearfish. It’s called Paha Karitukateyapi after a historic battle where the Sioux defeated Crow Indians. It translates to “the hill where Crows were killed.” Near the trail head, a deer crossed the path and I parked the car. We agreed we would spread Jesse’s ashes whenever we felt called to. Within a short distance of climbing the peak, we spotted a tall red pine tree just off the trail. His friends were too sad and choked up to speak, so I honored Jesse with some words from my heart. We then all took turns spreading his ashes around the base of the tree.
After completing this, I moved away from the tree to take everything in from a distance. The tree appeared to glow from the base up. Everything lit up, and the red pine became redder. The colors intensified with a powerful red, white glow. This was a very surreal and powerful moment. I felt this was Jesse’s spirit, and sensed he was supremely happy with the location, and his soul was officially set free. Words cannot fully describe this experience. Also, I found a unique red stone not far from the red pine tree and I picked it up and put it in my pocket.
I started to really understand why Jesse Graves’ Lakota name was Red Shield, Wahacanka Luta, as the color red was consistently showing up throughout my experiences. In Lakota culture red symbolizes life, the Earth, blood, the sacred northern direction, and everything that connects us to the spiritual world.
After Jesse’s ash-spreading, I said my goodbyes to his friends, and I was excited to explore Spearfish Canyon. I drove through the winding roads and eventually found a spot to park near Spearfish Falls. The area is incredibly beautiful, and Frank Lloyd Wright called the area “unique and unparalleled elsewhere in our country.” I walked on the trail for a few miles and came to a clearing where I could see the horizon and varying levels of canyons and pine trees. It was truly stunning – the greens, yellows, browns, and the blue sky. I paused for a water break to take everything in.
All of a sudden, the whole sky turned a deep red color. I would describe this as video editing where color saturation can be changed. It was as if a giant red shadow filled the sky and my eyes; almost like an eclipse where everything changes for a short period of time. I saw the shape of Jesse fill the skyline with his guitar in hand. The experience lasted ten seconds at most. This was the most profound experience of the entire trip, and every prior experience led up to this moment.
This made me very happy to see him in his new spiritual state as he was completely free and onto his next gig in the Black Hills. He was finally home. To be honest, I was very envious as he no longer had the constraints of a physical body.
I am convinced all the meditation I have done over the last ten years allowed me to experience this and be open to receiving it. The mind and intellect block the receiving of higher spiritual knowledge and the practice of meditation removes the mud and the muck of the mind to see things as they truly are.
Upon arriving home, I felt a sense of completion, bliss, and spiritual peace. It felt like I was living in the clouds, as if transported into the sky, an extremely heightened level of awareness. This samadhi state lasted for the next three weeks, a trance like state of thoughtless awareness. There was no thinking going on. It felt like everything was complete, I was complete, my life was complete, and I no longer needed to do anything in the external world. This feeling eventually wore off. I have never had a spiritual state for such a period. I’ve been unsuccessfully chasing this feeling ever since.
Looking back, through osmosis, I was able to pick up Jesse’s life on the other side. It is the greatest feeling in the world! Many people who have had near death experiences and have come back, say how peaceful everything is.
If you choose to visit the sacred Black Hills, I recommend putting the following on your itinerary: Bear Butte, Spearfish Canyon, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Black Elk Peak, Crazy Horse Memorial, and Badlands National Park. If you have time, check out Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. The tower’s real name is Mato Tipila which translates to Bear Lodge. The formation was made famous in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of The Third Kind.
Satellite pictures from outer space confirm that the Black Hills are shaped like a human heart. The topography even shows veins and arteries associated with the heart shape. From my experience, I believe this area to be the most powerful location in the United States.
If you want to spiritually go deeper and learn more, I recommend reading Black Elk Speaks by Neihardt. Quentin H. Young’s Mystic Visions: Black Elk’s Great Vision Clarified is another fantastic read. Also, Quentin Young has two great YouTube videos titled: “The Fate of Humanity: Black Elk Speaks” and “Black Elk’s Message to the World.” Thunderheart, a classic film starring Val Kilmer, Sam Shepard, Fred Ward, Graham Greene, Ted Thin Elk, and John Trudell. Written by John Fusco, the film dives deep into the mystical and the intersection of spirit and land. And you can’t go wrong with anything from Russell Means.
