Long-Ago Stories of the Eastern Cherokee (8 page)

He taught his people the dance, and soon other tribes heard of the dance. They would send people from their reservations to learn the dance and bring it back to their people. The dance spread from reservation to reservation. Finally, it reached the Lakota reservations. Shirts were made to use in the dance. It was said that they were medicine shirts and had the power to turn aside the bullets of the white man and send them across the plains where they would not hurt anybody. The dance was known as the Ghost Dance and the shirts were known as Ghost Dance Shirts.

The army informed the government in Washington, D.C., about the Ghost Dance. When the men in Washington heard about all of the tribes doing the dance, they thought this was the beginning of an Indian uprising on a massive scale. They sent word back to the army to make lists of tribes who were supporting the dance and ordered it to stop the dancers by any means necessary.

Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Lakota had supported the dance. Indian police came to arrest him. His followers resisted, and in the ensuing fight Sitting Bull was killed by the Indian police. Fearing the anger of the army, many of his followers fled to Sitting Bull's half brother, Big Foot, for protection. Big Foot led a small band of Minconjou Lakota. When he heard that Sitting Bull had been killed by the Indian police, he feared for his small band, for he too had supported the Ghost Dance. He found out that his name was on the army's list. He decided to take his small band to Red Cloud's reservation for protection.

It was the middle of winter and Big Foot was sick with pneumonia. He was so weak he couldn't sit on a horse. His people put him in the back of an open wagon and they left for Red Cloud's reservation.

The Seventh Calvary had been reformed after its disastrous defeat at Little Big Horn many years before. They were in charge of making sure the Minconjou stayed on their reservation. When they found out the Minconjou had left, a group of soldiers set out after them. It wasn't long before some of Big Foot's scouts came up to tell him that the soldiers were approaching quickly. Big Foot had a white flag raised on his wagon to show the soldiers that they didn't intend to fight. The soldiers caught up with Big Foot and the soldier's scouts said there were too many Lakota. They advised that it would be better to wait until the rest of the troop caught up with them the next morning before trying to collect the Minconjou weapons.

That night the Minconjou camped in a valley surrounded on three sides by ridges. Soldiers were stationed on two ridges with the valley in the middle. They had two Hotchkiss cannon that they placed on the third ridge. The cannon were facing down the row of lodges of the Minconjou.

The next morning the rest of the cavalry caught up with them. They brought with them two more cannon. These were placed on the ridge with the other two. Soldiers went down into the camp. They counted about 350 Lakota, most of them women, children and old men. They told the warriors to bring out their weapons. The warriors brought out bows and arrows, spears and tomahawks.

The soldiers were not satisfied. They started going into the lodges and found more weapons. Suddenly, an officer was struggling with a warrior who had hidden a rifle under his robe. A shot rang out and the officer fell to the ground. The soldiers on the ridges started firing down into the camp. The four cannon started shooting into the camp. Warriors were struggling with the soldiers and trying to get to their weapons so they could fight back. A large group of women and children started running toward a nearby gulch to get away from the fighting. Several soldiers saw them running and turned their horses after them, shooting at them as they ran. The soldiers killed them all.

The shooting was so constant, a survivor said, that “it sounded like someone was slowly tearing a large piece of canvas.” When the shooting finally stopped, over 150 Lakota men, women and children lay dead and 25 soldiers had been killed, many by their fellow soldiers. A blizzard was moving in, so the dead Lakota were left where they had fallen and the wounded were loaded into wagons and taken to a nearby army post. At the post, they did not know where to put the wounded so they were left in the wagons in the freezing temperatures of the blizzard while a decision was made. Finally, a small chapel was cleared out and straw was thrown on the floor. The wounded Lakota were laid down on the straw.

Black Elk, a Lakota holy man, walked among the bodies that day. Later, in his old age, he would talk about that day:

When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along that crooked gulch, as plain as the day I saw them with eyes still young. And I saw that something else died there in the bloody mud and lay buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in his youth, you see me now, a pitiful old man who has done nothing. For the sacred hoop is broken and scattered, there is no center any longer and the sacred tree is dead
.

The date was December 29, 1890. The place was called Wounded Knee.

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