Ghost Dance http://sorrel

Ghost Dance--http://sorrel.humboldt.edu/~me2/engl560/beth.html

The Ghost Dance

A Brief History

All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing. Pretty soon in next spring Great Spirit come. He bring back all game of every kind…all dead Indians come back and live again. They all be strong just like young men, be young again. Old blind Indian see again and get young and have fine time. When Great Spirit comes this way, than all the Indians go to mountains, high up away from whites. Whites can't hurt Indians then. Then while Indians way up high, big flood like water and all white people die, get drowned! After that, water go way and then nobody but Indians everywhere and game all kinds thick… (Wovoka, The Paiute Messiah qtd. In Brown 416).

Completely demoralized by the 'accidental' shooting of Sitting Bull the great Hunkpapa leader during his arrest by U.S. Military led by General Miles (Brown 436), the Minneconjous Band led by sick and dying Spotted Elk (A.K.A. Bigfoot) came to the Pine Ridge Reservation from Canada under the flag of truce. The Minneconjous, described by a disciple of the Ghost Dance called Kicking Bear, as being comprised of "…mostly women who had lost husbands or other male relatives in fights…[who] danced until they fainted, because they wanted their warriors back" (Brown 434) were desperate, starving and unarmed. So how did they come to be slaughtered so ruthlessly on the 29^th day of the Moon of Popping Trees (December) in 1890 leaving only a few survivors out of some 300 souls? It all started with a plan by the U.S. Government to "solve" the problem of the Indians beginning with the theft of their land and ending with the murder of their culture.

Thinking the territory useless, the U.S. Government signed a treaty in1868 promising "…the North Platte River was to be 'set aside for the absolute and undisturbed use of the Indians…and the United States now agrees that no person…shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article'" (Cooke 133). Of course, as soon as rumors that the Black Hills contained gold began to circulate, this promise became as empty as any others made by the 'Great White Father' to native peoples. And on May 17th 1876, the breaking of this treaty precipitated the crushing defeat of the 7^th Calvary at the hands of the Sioux nation led by the defiant, "You need not bring any guides; you can find me easily. I will not run away" , Sitting Bull (Cooke 136) in the Battle of Little Bighorn (Cooke 133-151). But this battle, though a victory over the Anglo invaders, was temporary and short-lived. By September 5, 1877 Crazy Horse was dead, Sitting Bull was in exile in Canada and "…in all the Great Plains, from Canada south, there was no longer a free tribe or a "wild" Indian. It had not taken long; in 1840 the boundary of the permanent Indian Country had been completed and the Great Plains were to belong forever to Indians. A mere thirty-seven years later every solemn promise had been broken and no bit of ground large enough to be buried in remained to any Indian that could not--and probably would--be arbitrarily taken from him without warning" (Andrist 300). The Westward expansion was on, and the push to break up and the sell the Great Sioux Reservation was supported by a "westward-pushing railroad [and] promoters eager for cheap land to be sold at high profits to immigrants" (Brown 417).

By 1883 all that remained of the "brown living blanket… [were] carcasses" (Andrist 333-334). With their main source of sustenance, the Buffalo, systemtically destroyed by U.S. militarymen known as Buffalo soldiers, and most of the Sioux nation on reservations, all that remained was to round up the sedious and defiant leaders who were considered "…dangerous symbols of subversion" (Brown 417). Sitting Bull, as the leader to the Teton Sioux, was sought after as a primary target for forced assimilation. A meeting was arranged in September 1877 by the War Department with General Alfred Terry (known to Sitting Bull as One-star Terry) and a special commission to cross the border unders escort of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and proceed to Fort Walsh and offer Sitting a full pardon if he would agree to surrender and return to the reservation. Sitting Bull, understandably reluctant after watching the whites deceive Indians over and again, spoke with anger and suspicion, "I would like to know why you came here…You come here to tell us lies , but we don't want to hear them. I don't wish any such language used to be used on me;…Don't you say two more words…[g]o back where you came from…I intend to stay here" (Brown 418). Though Sitting Bull tried to take an uncompromising stance, ultimately, the Canadian government told him he was not a British citizen, and, therefore, could no longer remain in "…in [his] Great Mother's house [Queen Victoria]" (Brown 418). Despite his hard words, on July 19, 1881, Sitting Bull and 186 of his remaining followers crossed the border, and rode into Fort Buford" (Brown 420). When Sitting Bull was finally assassinated during his arrest, it was if all the spirit went out of the Sioux people, and by 1890 they were hungry not only for food but for the spiritual rebirth that Wovoka's message of deliverance and redemption seemed to offer. However, the U.S. Government felt that a ceremony designed to bring the downfall of white Americans was too much to be borne, and on a cold December day the 7^th Calvary, opened fire on some 300 unarmed men, women and children. The official report stated that the firing began when a gun went off during a struggle over a gun occurred while the soldiers were disarming the Minneconjou. However, given the 7^th Calavary's resentment of the Sioux, and the Ghost Dance's stated intent to eliminate whites, I'm disinclined to believe the official story. It's just difficult to swallow the idea that those soldiers really felt threatened by a bunch of sad and beaten starving old men, women and children. Though not officially called a massacre at the time, the horrible crime committed by the U.S. military on that day has been recognized and memorialized. As a visitor to the monument at Wounded Knee Creek in 1977, I can say that all that inhabits the solitary beauty of the praire around the Creek is the wind which seems to carry the voices of the slain innocents as it cries wistfully over the plains.

Works Cited

Andrist, Ralph K. The Long Death: the Last Days of the Plains Indian. New York, New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1964.

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970.

Cooke, David C. Fighting Indians of America. Cornwall, New York: The Cornwall Press, 1966.

Interesting Sites to Visit:

Scholarly document on Wounded Knee. Contains quotes from General in charge of 7^th Calvary that day-- General Miles:

http://www.dickshovel.com/WagnerA.html

Picture and brief background on Spotted Elk:

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/wpgs400/w4bigft.htm

Brief summary of Ghost Dance and meaning of symbols on Ghost Shirts (nice picture of one):

http://www.150trav/remembers/r519.htm

Survivor Account:

http://www.freeyellow.com/members4/postlewaite/page1.html

Chronology of Events leading to and Battle of Little Bighorn:

http://www.2.cbhma.org/history.html

Brief History of Wounded Knee and picture of Monument Site:

http://www.state.sd.us/tourism/sioux/wounded.htm

List of Journal Articles on the Ghost Dance:

http://www.bluecloud.org/37.html

Background on Wovoka and the G. Dance:

http://www.viewzone.com/wovoka.html