Volume 14 , Issue 7

Role of Ghost Dance In Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

Wikipedia says, "The Ghost Dance (Caddo: Nanissáanah, also called the Ghost Dance of 1890) was a new religious movement which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, had been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times."

The chief figure in the movement was the prophet of peace, Jack Wilson, known as Wovoka - a Paiute spiritual leader and creator of the Ghost Dance. Wovoka prophesied a peaceful end to white expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans.

In accordance with the prophet Jack Wilson's teachings, it was first practiced for the Ghost Dance among the Nevada Paiute in 1889. The practice swept throughout much of the Western United States, quickly reaching areas of California and Oklahoma. As the Ghost Dance spread from its original source, Native American tribes synthesized selective aspects of the ritual with their own beliefs. This process often created change in both the society that integrated it, and in the ritual itself.

Practice of the Ghost Dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance. In the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 when the U.S. Army forces killed at least 153 Lakota Sioux.

Wounded Knee Massacre

It was February 1890 when the United States government broke the Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota into five smaller reservations. The government wanted to accommodate white homesteaders from the eastern States. It intended to "break up tribal relationships" and "conform Indians to the white man's ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must."

On the reduced reservations, the government allocated family units on 320-acre plots for individual households. The Lakota were expected to farm and raise livestock, and they were encouraged to send their children to boarding schools with the goal of resembling, integrating and forbading inclusion of Native American traditional culture and language.

To help support the Sioux during the period of transition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) supplemented the Sioux with food and hired white farmers as teachers for the Sioux. The farming plan failed to take into account the difficulty which Sioux farmers would have in trying to cultivate crops in the "semi-arid" region of South Dakota. By the end of the 1890 growing season there was a time of intense heat, low rainfall. It was clear that the land was "unable" to produce substantial agricultural yields. The government's patience with supporting the Indians ran out. They cut rations for the Sioux in half. With the bison having been virtually eradicated a few years earlier, the Sioux were at risk of starvation.

The people turned to the "Ghost Dance ritual," which frightened the supervising agents of the BIA. Kicking Bear was forced to leave Standing Rock, but when the dances continued unabated, Agent McLaughlin asked for more troops, claiming the Hunkpapa spiritual leader "Sitting Bull" was the real leader of the movement.

A former agent, Valentine McGillycuddy, saw nothing extraordinary in the dances and ridiculed the panic that seemed to have overcome the agencies, "The coming of the troops has frightened the Indians. If the Seventh-Day Adventists prepare the ascension robes for the Second Coming of the Savior, the United States Army is not put in motion to prevent them. Why should not the Indians have the same privilege? If the troops remain, trouble is sure to come."

But . . . thousands of U.S. Army troops were deployed to the reservation. It was 15 December 1890 that Sitting Bull was arrested for failure to stop his people from practicing the Ghost Dance. During the incident, one of Sitting Bull's men (Catch the Bear) fired at "Lieutenant Bull Head," striking his right side. He instantly wheeled and shot "Sitting Bull," hitting him in the left side, between the tenth and eleventh ribs. This exchange resulted in deaths on both sides, including that of Sitting Bull.

Big Foot, (known as Spotted Elk) was a Miniconjou (a subdivision of the Lakota Sioux that inhabited western South Dakota) leader on the U.S. Army's list of "trouble-making" Indians. He was stopped while en route to convene with the remaining Sioux chiefs. U.S. Army officers forced him to relocate with his people to a small camp close to the Pine Ridge Agency. Here the soldiers could more closely watch the old chief.

On the evening of 28 December 1890 the small band of Sioux erected their tipis on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The following day, during an attempt by the officers to collect weapons from the band, one young, deaf Sioux warrior refused to relinquish his arms. A struggle followed in which somebody's weapon discharged into the air. One U.S. officer gave the command to open fire, and the Sioux responded by taking up previously confiscated weapons. Of course, the U.S. forces responded with carbine firearms and several rapid-fire light-artillery (Hotchkiss) guns mounted on the overlooking hill. Amongst the 153 dead Sioux, most were women and children. Following the massacre, Chief Kicking Bear officially surrendered his weapon to General Nelson A. Miles.

Outrage in the eastern United States emerged as the public learned about the events that had transpired. The U.S. government had insisted on numerous occasions that the Native American had already been successfully pacified. Many Americans felt the U.S. Army actions were harsh. Some related the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek to the "ungentlemanly act of kicking a man when he is already down." Public uproar played a role in the reinstatement of the previous treaty's terms, including full rations and more monetary compensation for lands taken away.

Millenarianism

Some have said that the Sioux variation on the Ghost Dance tended towards millenarianism, an innovation that distinguished the Sioux interpretation from Jack Wilson's original teachings. The Caddo Nation still practices the Ghost Dance today."

Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000-year intervals.

Millenarian groups claimed that the current society and its rulers were corrupt, unjust or otherwise wrong. They believed they would be destroyed soon by a powerful force. Others who held millenarian views such as those held by the earliest christians were condemned in 1530 by the Lutherans.

Millenarian beliefs have been claimed as causes for people to ignore conventional rules of behavior, which can result in violence directed inwards (such as the Jonestown mass suicides) and/or outwards (such as the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist acts). It sometimes includes a belief in supernatural powers or predetermined victory. In some cases, millenarians withdraw from society to await the intervention of god.

Millenarian ideologies or religious sects sometimes appear in oppressed peoples, such as the 19th century Ghost Dance movement among American Indians, just to mention only one of many others who practiced millenarism.

Many followers of the Ghost Dance understood Wovoka's role as being that of a teacher of pacifism and peace, others did not.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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