Reservation life left many bands discour-. aged, particularly Plains people who were used to roaming free. Word began to spread of a Paiute shaman in Nevada who had a message of hope. His name was Wovoka, but people also referred to him as a messiah. Wovoka had a vision of a day when native people could live the old ways again with plentiful game: “A tidal wave of new soil would cover the Earth, bury the whites, and restore the prairie.”
In order to bring this event about, he said, native people were to dance the Ghost Dance wearing special Ghost Shirts of white muslin decorated with feathers, symbols, or an eagle. Many Lakota also believed the Ghost Shirts would keep them safe from bullets. While many Plains nations practiced the Ghost Dance, it became especially important among the Lakota, who had lost so much.
By i8 9 o, half of the land originally given to the Lakota had been taken back and sold to settlers. The land that was lost was the best hunting land, and some Lakota protested. The government responded by cutting off rations. With starvation and a cold winter approaching, the Lakota embraced the Ghost Dance as their last hope.
A panicked Indian Agent notified officials in Washington, D. C., about the “wild and crazy” Native Americans. President Benjamin Harrison ordered all unauthorized activities stopped. The secretary of war sent orders to stop the Ghost Dancing and arrest Chief Sitting Bull and Chief Big Foot of the Teton Sioux at the Standing Rock Reservation in the Dakotas. As he was being arrested by Indian Police (men of the tribe appointed as police officers by the Indian agent) under the orders of the agent at Standing Rock, Chief Sitting Bull was accidently shot and killed during a scuffle.
Although sick with pneumonia. Chief Big Foot moved his people to the Pine Ridge Res
Ervation, hoping for protection from Chief Red Cloud’s band. The Seventh Cavalry of the U. S. Army intercepted them at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. While Big Foot and his warriors talked with army officers, they heard shots fired. Soldiers and warriors grabbed for guns, and a storm of bullets rained down upon the camp. The soldiers perched on a hill above the camp, with Hotchkiss guns that worked
GHOST DANCE
With poverty and disease constant companions in the late i88os, native people grasped for hope that their situation would improve. The Ghost Dance gave them something to believe in. More than a dance, the Ghost Dance was a religion that preached that traditional living would lead to a world reborn without white people.
Although meditation and prayer were important, there was also a ritual dance. After purification in a sweat lodge, dancers dressed in special Ghost Dance shirts and painted themselves with red paint. Dancers sang special songs while circling counterclockwise around a sacred tree. The tempo of the songs and dance increased as the Ghost Dance continued, sometimes for days. Participants sometimes fell to the ground as if dead and experienced visions of seeing beloved family members who had died.
The Ghost Dance.
Like machine guns, spraying waves of bullets throughout the camp. Women and children ran through the clouds of smoke for a nearby ravine, but most didn’t make it. When the shooting stopped, about 300 Lakota men, women, and children lay dead, as well as 25 soldiers. A blizzard blew through the camp, delaying body retrieval for a couple of days. The frozen bodies were buried in a long trench. Ghost Shirts were ripped from the bodies as souvenirs.
On December 29,1890, the Indian Wars and the Ghost Dance movement officially ended at Big Foot's band. Wounded Knee.
World History
