Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee

1890 One day w hen he was 14, a boy named Slow followed his father and some other SOUTH DAKOTA Hunkpapa Sioux warriors on a raid against the neighbor ing Crow people. This was around 1845, in what is now South Dakota. The boy c arried only a stick in his hand, but he rode st raight toward a Crow warrior who was aiming an arrow at him and knocked the warrior to the ground. For Slow ’s bravery, his father gave him a new name : Tatanka Yotanka, or Sitting Bull, after the s olitary buffalo that came to the father one night as a sign. Sitting Bull earned me mbership in the elite Strong Heart Society of warriors before he turned 17. He later beca me the society’s leader. Ghost Dance at Wound ed Knee The massive Indian removals Sitting Bull came of age during a time of the 1830s marked the end of of sweeping change for his people. the first pha se of Indian Gathering on the horizon was an conquest. L ater, as the United enemy much more powerful than the States set it s sights across the Crows. The U.S. government was entire continent, there was no starting to view the Great Plains as more than just a dumping ground for “outside” la nd to which Indians could be ba nished. Instead, the the eastern Indians. California gold tribes were corralled inside the fever brought herds of fortune-seekers fixed borde rs of reservations— over the grass-lands. Railroads mostly barr en patches of land followed, sprouting supply depots and that the whi tes hadn’t yet found settlements along the way. Now the a use for. While the Civil War Plains tribes saw their worlds shifting and shrinking as the worlds of the was raging over the destiny of the slaves, t he Indian Wars Choctaws and the Cherokees and signaled the fate of another others had two decades before. The people. The contest reached its government’s policy toward the costly clima x in 1890, on a Indians amounted to a war strategy: South Dakot a Sioux Divide and conquer. reservation called Pine Ridge. Sit ting Bull was determined to resist. In Meanwhile, the government forcibly 1868, he led a group of Sioux who refused “purcha sed” nine million acres from the to sign a treaty confining the tribe to a reserva tion Sioux. reservation. He knew that such treaties had For five more years, Sitting Bull and his often been broken, and he also knew that, people wandered in the wilderness, within such narrow boundaries, his resisting U.S. demands for their surrender. peopl e’s way of life would end. Sitting They sought refuge in Canada but finally, Bul l’s defiance inspired thousands of on the promise of a pardon for their leader, Indi ans from many Plains tribes to join the turned themselves in at Fort Buford, caus e. Dakota Territory, on July 19, 1881. The It wasn’t long before the governm ent agents broke their word and Army, fulfilling the Indian’s The arreste d Sitting Bull. He was held in worst fears, violated the Governm ent military prison for two years before being Sioux treaty to prospect for forcibly released into the custody of Interior gold in the Black Hills. Lt. “purchased” Depart ment agents at Standing Rock Col. George Armstrong nine mil lion Reserva tion. Custer was the leader of this acres from the expedition. In 1876, reservat ion IN CONTEXT after the Sioux refused to Sioux . sell the Black Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull Hil ls, the government launched attacks aga inst Sitting Bull’s branch and declared Like Sit ting Bull, William F. Cody all of the reservation-dwellers prisoners of demonst rated his bravery and skill as a wa r. warrior early in life. He learned to wrangle On June 17 of that year, Sitting Bull, horses a nd fight Indians as a boy in Cra zy Horse and other fugitive Sioux Kansas. During the Civil War, he served surprised an Army unit at Rosebud Creek as a teenage scout for the Kansas Cavalry in s outheastern Montana and forced it to in its ca mpaigns against the Comanches retr eat. Not far to the west, along the Little and Kiow as. Bighor n River, the victorious Indians Whe n the Union Pacific Railway began stoppe d to hunt awhile and rest their laying it s tracks across the continent, Cody hor ses. Here Sitting Bull performed the found w ork as a buffalo hunter supplying Sun Dance, a special ritual for bringing on the huge construction crews with meat. He vis ions. Afterwards he described what he earned hi s nickname by reportedly killing had seen: government soldiers dropping 4,280 of the animals in an eight-month out of the sky like grasshoppers. th stretch. The following week, Custer’s 7 Cavalry At the time the Civil War ended, the appr oached the sprawling riverside camp. buffalo on the Plains numbered around 12 No one knows why the commander million. To the 31 Indian tribes of the orde red his men to charge the Indians region, these animals were a sacred gift of bef ore the expected reinforcements arrived. food, clot hing and shelter. The white man Of more than 200 U.S. troops and their saw them differently. mount s, only one horse, named Comanche, Profe ssional marksmen like Buffalo Bill sur vived the resulting slaughter. The were fol lowed by tourists who fired on inc ident lent a bitter flavor to the nation’s grazing herds for the sport. The discovery cent ennial celebrations on July 4. of a commercial process for making Sitting Bull’s legions knew that they buffalo leather spurred the slaughter of woul d pay for the blow they had dealt the more tha n 9 million head in the early Arm y. The gathered tribes went their 1870s. By the turn of the century, the sepa rate ways, some onto the open plains, entire buf falo population of the U.S. would othe rs onto reservations. Sitting Bull kept be slashe d to fewer than 50. his faith that the Indians could hold out against the white man’s greed. Through vivid, often exaggerated miserable. Diseases swept thr ough the newspaper account s, Sitting Bull’s reservations like winds of dea th. Carrots DOCUMENT exploits had brought him international and potatoes withered in the ha rd ground. How the West fame. The gove rnment arranged public Around this same time, a new religious appearances for the captive chief in 15 movement was spreading among Indian Was Lost U.S. cities during 1884. The following tribes all across the west. Far away in year, he joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Nevada a Paiute Indian farmer named A writer named John L. traveling Wild West. Wovoka was telling his people about a O’Sullivan predicted in vision he’d had in which all the ancestors 1845 “the fulfillment of Sitting Bull returned to the reservation our manifest destiny to and buffalo rose from the dead, restoring in 1887. The gove rnment was trying to overspread the continent force the Sioux to sell more land, so the the old Indian way of life fore ver. In a allotted by Providence.” chief took up hi s old cause of resistance. time of increasing pressure from whites, He sensed, as many other Within a coupl e of years, the Indians listened eagerly to this message Americans did, the government had won again and divided of deliverance. They began pe rforming a unfolding of a divine plan the reduced rese rvation into six parts. Life dance that Wovoka said would make the for the country’s for the Sioux gr ew more and more vision come true. expansion. Just four years later, the discovery of gold in California turned “manifest destiny” into a IN CONTEXT… stampede. Forty-niners (men seeking their Between Indian fights, Cody had often performed in stage plays about th e West. fortunes in the gold fields After his decisive triumph over Y ellow Hair, in 1849) flocked west by re-enactments of the encounter bec ame the the thousands. San centerpiece of a nationwide theat rical tour. Francisco was their The buffalo hunter and Indian fig hter had boomtown. Calls for become America’s most popular showman. statehood came swift and In 1883, Cody organized a comb ination loud. circus, rodeo and traveling museu m called With the admission of Wild West Show, which became an California to the Union in overnight sensation. In 1885, he had little 1850, the western border trouble persuading the reservation agents to of the U.S. leaped from let him take Sitting Bull off their hands. Iowa and Missouri and This arrangement was conduct ed at least Texas to the Pacific in a partially on Sitting Bull’s terms. He asked single bound. In more for and received $50 a month payment and than just a political sense, the full proceeds from posing for the Indians in between were surrounded. The photographs. Other theatrical agen ts had U.S. Senate imposed the used captured Indians as objects o f mockery, following conditions in its but Cody treated Sitting Bull with dignity. Instead of leading other Indians into staged treaty with the Western While Sitting Bu ll (named for a buffalo) defeats, the Sioux chief rode his horse Shoshoni in 1863. was fighting fo r the rights of his people to silently and alone into the arena. Although The telegraph and live as they alw ays had, Buffalo Bill Cody audiences hissed and booed, new spapers overland stage lines having and others were helping to make that around the country and in Canada reported been established and impossible.

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