Ghost Dance

Through the 250 year period from 1630 when land was taken from the Indians to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony, until 1880 the whites had been like a locust swarm in a wheat field.  Unceasingly the invaders moved westward, reproducing in unequaled numbers, ever grasping more land, wantonly slaying more game, and forcing the natives ever into smaller areas.  It seemed there was no way to stop the movement of this alien force.  Tribe after tribe had been decimated, either by disease carried by the white man, or through the studied slaughter of the Indian tribesmen.

By 1889 nearly every tribe across this great country had been reduced to token numbers, and those were sentenced to live by white men’s rules on reservations often far from their past hunting grounds.  However, in Nevada which had been a state for a mere 25 years, a Paiute Indian holy man called Wovoka foretold of a great new beginning for all Indians.  All whites would disappear, all past Indians would return, and life would once more be transformed to what it had been before the onset of the white horde.  Plentiful game of all kinds would abound.  All that was necessary to bring about this rejuvenation was to believe, and to dance as he taught them, to appease the Gods.

The new religion moved like a wild fire through most of the tribes yet in existence.  The remnants of the Great Sioux Nation became followers of the Ghost Dance.  One branch of the Sioux was named the Minneconjou Tribe.  Their medicine man, Yellow Bird, led the Tribe in the Ghost Dance.  The dancing Indians tended to frighten the white settlers, so the Army decided to disarm them.  Chief Bigfoot, desperately ill with pneumonia, agreed to enter an encampment at Wounded Knee Creek.  The next morning 146 Minneconjou men, women, and children were slain as they attempted to flee the white man’s wrath.  This was nearly the end of the once proud and free Indian tribes that had been in this huge country for thousands of years.  The Ghost Dance promise had failed.