Basil Plant

Henri Miller
27 May 2016

The Ghost Dance Movement, and The Wounded Knee Massacre

The Ghost Dance Movement was meant to be a peaceful dance to bring back the original
way of life for the Native Americans. Soldiers were sent to reservations to quell this movement,
which only instilled fear. Because of this action it ended as an unjust cruel massacre that killed
hundreds of men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek which ended a dream.
Native Americans were growing into a state of despair and desperately needed a new hope.
The Native Americans were living in agencies on reservations where buffalo was on the verge of
extinction while famine and disease became prevalent among many tribes and desperation was
on the verge of uprising. The natives were having a hard time adapting to the new way of life and
began to be all but demoralized. Black Elk, Lakota, " My people looked pitiful. There was a
big drought, and the rivers and creeks seemed to be dying. Nothing would grow that the people
had planted, and the Wasichus had been sending less cattle and other food than ever before. The
Wasichus had slaughtered all the bison and shut us up in pens. It looked as if we might all starve
to death. We could not eat lies, and there was nothing we could do.1
Then a Paiute native by the name of Wovoka (Jack Wilson) went into a two day coma in
December 1888 while cutting wood in the Pine Grove Hills. Observer Ed Dyer said, "His body

1Digital History, Documents Relating to the Wounded Knee Massacre, Digital History ID
1101, (2016), http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1101.

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was as stiff as a board.2 He awakened January 1, 1889 after a solar eclipse and had a vision. He
saw his ancestors in the spirit world alive and waiting. He saw the natives being pulled up into
the sky. The world would swallow up the white man returning to its pristine condition with the
buffalo back and thriving. Then all the ancestors and natives would come back to live on earth in
peace and how they were meant to. He also saw a specific dance that when preformed constantly
would bid this vision to come forth, and so the round dance or ghost dance was formed. "When
the Sun died, Wovoka said. I went up to Heaven and saw God and all the people who had died
a long time ago. God told me to come back and tell my people they must be good and love one
another, and not fight, or steal or lie. He gave me this dance to give to my people.3 The Ghost
Dance Movement began as a influential vision, but was interpreted as an act of war that
unexpectedly brought natives together.
When the government caught wind of the movement and perceived it as a possible threat
for war they sent out soldiers to the reservations to quell the threat. There were rumors that the
soldiers were coming to disarm the natives, take all their guns and horses. The natives of
Rosebud and various small groups of others caught wind of this and saw the soldiers coming.
When they saw this large force of soldiers heading their way it instilled a great deal of fear. Men,
women, and children abandoned their reservations to possibly seek refuge in Ogalalla (Pine
Ridge). When they arrived at Pine Ridge they found soldiers had been dispatched there as well.
Upon seeing the large force of soldiers waiting outside the reservation they veered off course and

2Encyclopedia of World Biography, Wovoka Biography, Ghost Dance,

http://www.ghostdance.com/history/history-wovokaewb.html.

3Robert A. Toledo, Wovoka The Paiute Messiah, View Zone,

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

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fled into the Bad Lands. The estimated amount of natives that went into the Bad Lands was 300
Lodges, or about 1,700 natives under the leadership of Eagle Pipe, Turning Bear, High Hawk,
Short Bull, Lance, No Flesh, Pine Bird, Crow Dog, Two Strike and White Horse.
When some of the leaders at Pine Ridge who believed in peace and order of their agency
heard about the natives fleeing into the Bad Lands wanted to send out peace commissions. They
remembered that many of these people were blood relatives and were only fleeing in fear of all
the soldiers being gathered. Upon going out on the first commission of peace they were able to
persuade about half of the natives from Rosebud to come out of their place of hiding and come
back with them to the agency of Pine Ridge. Young-Man-Afraid-of-his-Horses, Little Wound,
Fast Thunder, Louis Shangreau, John Grass, Jack Red Cloud, and Turning Hawk were some of
the peace makers that persuaded them to come back to Pine Ridge. Upon seeing how successful
they were with the first peace commission they decided to go out again to try and persuade the
rest of the group from the Rosebud agency. The peace commission caught up with the remaining
group from the Rosebud agency in the wilds of the Bad Lands and were able to talk the
remaining group into coming back with them to Pine Ridge. When they were about a days
journey from returning they heard that Big Foots band from the Cheyenne River agency were
fleeing towards Pine Ridge. When Big Foots band neared the Pine Ridge agency they were met
by soldiers and then completely surrounded. Upon being surrounded the soldiers then escorted
Big Foots group to Wounded Knee Creek rather than to Pine Ridge agency.
Upon arriving at Wounded Knee Creek the soldiers demanded that Big Foots band give up
all their guns. After the soldiers received the guns they separated all the men from their families
and tipis and taken to a different location a short distance away. Colonel Forsyth didn't believe
that they had given up all their guns and said to his interpreter Philip Wells ,Tell Big Foot he

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says the Indians have no arms, yet yesterday they were well armed when they surrendered. He is
deceiving me. Tell him he need have no fear in giving up his arms, as I wish to treat him kindly.
Big Foot replied, They have no guns, except such as you have found. Forsyth declared, You
are lying to me in return for my kindness.
While this exchange was happening a medicine man gaudily dressed and fantastically
painted started performing the Ghost Dance. He would bend down pick up dirt and throw it in
the air while exclaiming Ha! Ha! and said I have lived long enough, voicing he would fight
until the end. He then turned to the warriors and said, Do not fear, but let your hearts be strong.
Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured their bullets cannot penetrate
us. The prairie is large, and their bullets will fly over the prairies and will not come toward us. If
they do come toward us, they will float away like dust in the air. They were wearing ghost
shirts which were brightly colored shirts with images of eagles and buffalo upon them. They
believed that these ghost shirts would ward away the soldiers bullets leaving them unharmed.
Forsyth told the man, sit down and keep quiet. the medicine man didn't heed the order. Big
Foots brother-in-law replied, He will sit down when he gets around the circle.4 When he
finished the circle he sat down.
One of the younger warriors brandished a gun from underneath his blanket and shot and
killed an officer of the military. Turning Hawk reported, there was a crazy man, a young man of
very bad influence and in fact a nobody, among that bunch of Indians fired his gun Spotted
Horse said, This man shot an officer in the army; the first shot killed this officer. I was a

4"Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1890," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com

(1998).

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voluntary scout at that encounter and I saw exactly what was done5 After this shot was fired
the soldiers opened fire into the group killing most of them. Those that escaped the initial volley
of shots fired ran into a ravine. They were pursued and killed as they ran up the other side of the
ravine.
Shortly after the shooting began the soldiers turned their Hotchkiss guns (gatling -style
gun) and other arms towards the woman and children standing in their lodges underneath a flag
of truce and opened fire. American Horse said, There was a woman with an infant in her arms
who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce Right near the flag of truce a mother
was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still
nursing After most of the Natives had already been killed trying to flee this horrible
massacre, a call was made that those who were not killed or wounded could come out and they
would be safe. Little boys who were not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as
soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there,6 as
reported by American Horse. After the shooting was done and the smoke cleared approximately
300 some Sioux Natives were killed, their leader Big Foot among the dead.
When they went about the task of gathering the dead and burying them a blizzard came in
and and halted progress for 3 days. Thomas H. Tibbles Omaha World Herald "Nothing I have
seen in my whole life ever affected or depressed or haunted me like the scenes I saw that night

5 Lakota Accounts of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, From the Report of the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1891, volume 1, pages 179-181. Extracts from verbatim
stenographic report of council held by delegations of Sioux with Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, at Washington, February 11, 1891,
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/eight/wklakota.htm.

6Lakota Accounts of the Massacre at Wounded Knee,

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/eight/wklakota.htm.

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in that church. One un-wounded old woman held a baby on her lap I handed a cup of water
to the old woman, telling her to give it to the child, who grabbed it as if parched with thirst. As
she swallowed it hurriedly, I saw it gush right out again, a bloodstained stream, through a hole in
her neck." Heartsick, I went to find the surgeon For a moment he stood there near the door,
looking over the mass of suffering and dying women and children The silence they kept was
so complete that it was oppressive Then to my amazement I saw that the surgeon, who I knew
had served in the Civil War, attending the wounded from the Wilderness to Appomattox, began
to grow pale 'This is the first time I've seen a lot of women and children shot to pieces,' he
said. 'I can't stand it. Out at Wounded Knee, because a storm set in, followed by a blizzard, the
bodies of the slain Indians lay untouched for three days, frozen stiff from where they had fallen.
Finally they were buried in a large trench dug on the battlefield itself. On that third day Colonel
Colby saw the blanket of a corpse move Under the blanket, snuggled up to its dead mother,
he found a suckling baby girl.7
In the beginning the Ghost Dance Movement was meant to be a passive non-threatening
dance and a way of thinking that would bring back their original way of life and peace. Under
the strain of the increasingly difficult living conditions on the reservations with crops failing and
the buffalo dying out; the natives found a new hope. When the soldiers were dispatched it turned
an already tense situation into one of fear and misunderstanding. All because of one over zealous
native who turned Wounded Knee Creek into a bloody massacre. Soldiers unjustly murdered
hundreds of women and children in an appalling gruesome manner which effectively killed a
dream.

7Documents Relating to the Wounded Knee Massacre,

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1101.

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Work Cited
1. Wovoka Biography, accessed May 27, 2016,
http://www.ghostdance.com/history/history-wovokaewb.html
2. "Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1890," EyeWitness to History,
www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (1998)
3. PBS - THE WEST - Lakota accounts of the massacre at Wounded Knee (1891),
accessed May 27, 2016, http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/eight/wklakota.htm
4. Digital History, accessed May 27, 2016,
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1101
5. Ghost Dance, accessed May 27, 2016, http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3775.html
6. WOVOKA: The Paiute Messiah, accessed May 27,2016,
http://www.viewzone.com/wovoka.html

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