By 1890, no Indian people anywhere in the West lived freely on their own land. And even the reservations on which they struggled to survive were being broken up under the Dawes Act. Congress had cut appropriations.
Rations were drastically reduced. There were deadly epidemics of measles, influenza, whooping cough. On the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, the Lakota medicine man Sitting Bull was living quietly in his cabin. He was still regarded with respect by those Lakotas who remembered the eerie accuracy of his visions during the days when they had fought Custer.
But the Lakota were divided now, as they struggled to come to terms with the white man's world. And Sitting Bull had had another, more disturbing vision. This one told him that the worst fate that could befall a Lakota awaited him, to die at the hands of his own people.
That fall, Sitting Bull had a visitor, a Minicanju Lakota named Kicking Bear, just back from a train trip to the far west. Bearing remarkable news. A ceremony called the Ghost Dance was sweeping through many tribes of the West.
It was part of a message of hope for all Indian peoples, being preached by a Paiute medicine man and prophet named Wavoka. My brothers, I bring you word from your fathers, the ghosts, that they are marching now to join you. Led by the Messiah, who came once to live on earth with the white man, but was killed by them. I bring to you the promise of a day in which there will be no white man to lay his hand on the bridle of the Indian's horse. When the red men of the prairie will rule the world.
Wovoka. Wovoka's Gospel of Salvation. was filled with Christian as well as Indian elements. Men and women were first to purify themselves and forswear alcohol and violence.
Then they were to dance in a large circle, chanting and appealing to the spirits of their ancestors. When they did, Wovoka promised, the whites would vanish. The buffalo would cover the earth again.
The Ghost Dance, I think, was a desperate prayer. They thought that, well, it may be possible that all of this has been a bad dream or all of this is passing and there will be the restoration of the world new and alive. Like most Indians, Sitting Bull remained skeptical of the ceremony's promised powers.
But he agreed to let the Ghost Dance be taught. to those people at Standing Rock who wanted to learn it. In the Lakota version of the ceremony, the dancers wore special shirts, said to be stronger than the white man's bullets. The people wearing the sacred shirts and feathers now formed a ring.
We boys were in it, all joined hands. Everyone was respectful and quiet. Expecting something wonderful to happen, the leaders beat time and sang as the people danced, going round to the left in a sideways step.
Occasionally someone fell unconscious into the center. As each one came to, she or he slowly sat up and looked about, bewildered. and then began wailing inconsolably. Pine Ridge Agency, November 12, 1890. We need protection and we need it now. Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy.
The leader should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done at once. Daniel F. Royer Responding to the pleas of a frightened Indian agent, Washington dispatched General Nelson A. Miles with 5,000 troops, including the 7th Cavalry, Custer's old command. At Pine Ridge and Rosebud in South Dakota, the Ghost Dancers feared that the soldiers had come to attack them, and fled to a remote plateau surrounded by cliffs, which nervous whites soon began calling the Stronghold.
Meanwhile, at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Indian police, charged with keeping peace among their own people, heard a rumor that Sitting Bull was about to die. to join the Ghost Dancers. 43 Lakota policemen were dispatched to bring Sitting Bull in. Two troops of U.S. Cavalry followed at a distance.
Before dawn on December 15, 1890, the police burst into Sitting Bull's house, ordered him to his feet, and pushed him toward the door. Outside, Sitting Bull's followers began to gather, taunting the Lakota police, vowing to keep them from taking their leader. Sitting Bull hesitated, unsure of what to do.
Then one of his supporters raised his rifle and shot one of the policemen. Both sides began firing. A Lakota policeman put a bullet through Sitting Bull's head. The last of his great visions had come to pass. Sitting Bull had been killed by his own people.
My grandfather's mother was one of the people who was from Sitting Bull's camp. And my grandfather would tell me that when Sitting Bull was killed, they had very few horses. So the few horses they had, they put the young children on, and they walked to Bigfoot's camp.
And that she wept as she walked. And she wept not only for Sitting Bull being killed the way he was, but also wept. Because she feared that she would not live to have children. And if she did have children, would they be Lakota? Sitting Bull's grieving followers fled toward the Cheyenne River Reservation, where they joined a mini-conju band led by a chief named Bigfoot.
He had once been an enthusiastic ghost dancer, but he was no longer certain that the world would be transformed. Bigfoot decided to take his band into Pine Ridge and see if there wasn't some way to reconcile things. But General Miles misunderstood what Bigfoot was doing and ordered the 7th Cavalry under Colonel John Forsyth to intercept him. They caught up with Bigfoot three days after Christmas. The chief was riding in a wagon, too ill with pneumonia even to sit up.
But he flew a white flag to show his peaceful intentions. The soldiers transferred Bigfoot to an army ambulance and then led his band down to a little creek for the night. It was called Wounded Knee.
There were 120 men and 230 women and children. The soldiers distributed rations. An army doctor did what he could for Bigfoot.
But the soldiers also posted four cannon on the top of a rise overlooking the camp. The following morning there was a bugle call. Then I saw the soldiers mounting their horses and surrounding us. It was announced that all men should come to the center for a talk.
Bigfoot was brought out of his tent and sat, and the old men were gathered around him. Dewey beard. Charles Allen, a reporter for a Nebraska newspaper, watched from the hilltop. At the southeast edge of the group of standing Indians, there was a fair-sized plat of grass. Where in all the exuberance of early youth were eight or ten Indian boys dressed in the gray school uniforms of that period, the fun they were having as they played bucking horse, leapfrog, and similar games, carried the mind for a fleeting moment back to the days of boyhood.
Troops began moving from teepee to teepee, confiscating knives and axes from the women. Sometimes seizing a rifle, a medicine man began to dance. Do not fear, he told the warriors, but let your hearts be strong.
Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured the bullets cannot penetrate us. Suddenly, scooping up a handful of dirt, he tossed it scattering in the air, and with eyes turned toward heaven. implored the Great Spirit to scatter the soldiers likewise. Almost simultaneously with him throwing a handful of dirt into the air, soldiers tried to disarm a man who was deaf. And he hung on to his rifle and they kind of struggled over it and it went off.
These two things happened at the same time and bang, I mean, it just blew everything up. The soldiers opened fire with rifles, revolvers, and finally the cannon that hurled exploding shells into the teepees. The Lakotas did their best to fight back. When the shooting finally stopped, Some 250 men, women, and children were dead. I walked around viewing the sad spectacle.
On reaching the corner of the green where the schoolboys had been so happy in their sports for a short time before, there was spread before me the saddest picture I had seen or was to see thereafter. For on that spot of their playful choice, were scattered the prostrate bodies of all those fine little Indian boys, cold in death. The gunfire had blazed across their playground in a way that permitted no escape. They must have fallen like grass before the sickle. Dead, too, were twenty-five soldiers.
Wounded Lakotas and wounded soldiers alike were taken to the Holy Cross Episcopal Church at Pine Ridge. Its walls were still hung with Christmas decorations. Pews were torn from their fastenings and armfuls of hay fetched by Indian helpers.
Upon a layer of this we spread quilts and blankets taken from our own beds. The victims were lifted as gently as possible in two long rows on the floor. A pathetic array of young girls and women, babes in arms, little children, and a few men, all pierced with bullets. A young-