Like Grass Before the Sickle
By 1890, no Indian people anywhere in the West lived freely on their own land -- and even the reservations on
which they struggled to survive were being broken up under the Dawes Act. Congress had cut appropriations.
Rations were drastically reduced. There were deadly epidemics of measles, influenza,
whooping cough.
On the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, the Lakota medicine man Sitting Bull was
living quietly in his cabin He was still regarded with respect by those Lakotas who
remembered the eerie accuracy of his visions during the days when they had fought Custer.
But the Lakota were divided now, as they struggled to come to terms with the white man's
world.
And Sitting Bull had had another, more disturbing vision. This one told him that the worst
fate that could befall a Lakota awaited him -- to die at the hands of his own people.
That fall Sitting Bull had a visitor, a Miniconjou Lakota named Kicking Bear, just back from a train trip to the far
West and bearing remarkable news. A ceremony called the Ghost Dance was sweeping through many tribes of
the West. It was part of a message of hope for all Indian peoples being preached by a Paiute medicine man and
prophet named Wovoka.
My brothers, I bring you word from your fathers, the ghosts, that they are marching now to join you, led by the Messiah who came
once to live on earth with the white man but was killed by them... I bring to you the promise of a day in which there will be no white
man to lay his hand on the bridle of the Indians' horse; when the red men of the prairie will rule the world.
Wovoka
Wovoka's gospel of salvation was filled with Christian as well as Indian elements. Men and women were first to
purify themselves and forswear alcohol and violence. Then they were to dance in a large circle, chanting and
appealing to the spirits of their ancestors. When they did, Wovoka promised, the whites would vanish, the buffalo
would cover the earth again.
"The Ghost Dance, I think, was a desperate prayer. They thought that, well, it may be possible that all of this has
been a bad dream, or all of this is passing and there will be the restoration of the world we knew and loved."
N. Scott Momaday
Like most Indians, Sitting Bull remained skeptical of the ceremony's promised powers. But he
agreed to let the Ghost Dance be taught to those people at Standing Rock who wanted to learn
it. In the Lakota version of the ceremony, the dancers wore special shirts, said to be stronger than the white
man's bullets.
The people, wearing the sacred shirts and feathers, now formed a ring. We boys were in it. All joined hands.
Everyone was respectful and quiet, expecting something wonderful to happen... The leaders beat time and
sang as the people danced, going round to the left in a sidewise step. Occasionally, someone... fell
unconscious into the center... As each one came to, she, or he slowly sat up and looked about, bewildered,
and then began wailing inconsolably.
Pine Ridge Agency
November 12th, 1890
We need protection and we need it now. Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy... The
leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done at once.
Daniel F. Royer
Responding to the pleas of a frightened Indian agent, Washington dispatched General Nelson A. Miles with 5,000
troops, including the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's old command. At Pine Ridge and Rosebud in South Dakota, the
ghost dancers feared that the soldiers had come to attack them, and fled to a remote plateau surrounded by cliffs
which nervous whites soon began calling "the Stronghold."
Meanwhile, at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, Indian police -- charged with
keeping peace among their own people -- heard a rumor that Sitting Bull was about to join
the Ghost Dancers. Forty-three Lakota policemen were dispatched to bring him in. Two
troops of U.S. cavalry followed at a distance.
Before dawn on December 15th, 1890, the police burst into Sitting Bull's house, ordered him
to his feet, and pushed him toward the door. Outside, Sitting Bull's followers began to
gather, taunting the Lakota police, vowing to keep them from taking their leader. Sitting Bull hesitated, unsure
what to do.
Then, one of his supporters raised his rifle and shot one of the policemen. Both sides began firing. A Lakota
policeman put a bullet through Sitting Bull's head. The last of his great visions had come to pass. Sitting Bull had
been killed by his own people.
Sitting Bull's grieving followers fled toward the Cheyenne River Reservation where they joined a Miniconjou band
led by a chief named Big Foot. He had once been an enthusiastic Ghost dancer but he was no longer certain that
the world would be transformed. Big Foot decided to take his band in to Pine Ridge and see if there wasn't some
way to reconcile things.
But General Miles misunderstood what Big Foot was doing and ordered the 7th Cavalry under Colonel John
Forsyth to intercept him. They caught up with Big Foot three days after Christmas. The chief was riding in a
wagon, too ill with pneumonia even to sit up, but he flew a white flag to show his peaceful intentions.
The soldiers transferred Big Foot to an army ambulance and then led his band down to a little creek for the night.
It was called Wounded Knee.
There were 120 men and 230 women and children. The soldiers distributed rations. An army doctor did what he
could for Big Foot. But the soldiers also posted four cannon on the top of a rise overlooking the camp. The
following morning, Charles Allen, a reporter for a Nebraska newspaper, watched from the hilltop.
At the southeast edge of the group of standing Indians there was a fair-sized plat of grass where, in all the exuberance of early
youth, were eight or ten Indian boys dressed in the gray school uniforms of that period. The fun they were having as they played
"bucking horse," "leap frog," and similar games, carried the mind for a fleeting moment back to the days of boyhood.
Charles Allen
Troops began moving from tipi to tipi, confiscating knives and axes from the women, sometimes seizing a rifle. A
medicine man began to dance. "Do not fear," he told the warriors," but let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers
are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured the bullets cannot penetrate us."
Suddenly, scooping up a handful of dirt, he tossed it scattering in the air, and with eyes turned toward heaven, implored the Great
Spirit to scatter the soldiers likewise.
Charles Allen
"Almost simultaneously with him throwing a handful of dirt into the air, soldiers tried to disarm a man who was
deaf. And he hung on to his rifle and they kind of struggled over it and it went off. These two things happened at
the same time and -- bang -- I mean, it just blew everything up."
Robert Utley
The soldiers opened fire -- with rifles, revolvers, and finally, the cannon
that hurled exploding shells into the tipis. The Lakotas did their best to fight back. When the
shooting finally stopped, some 250 men, women and children were dead.
I walked around viewing the sad spectacle. On reaching the corner of the green where the schoolboys had
been so happy in their sports but a short time before, there was spread before me the saddest picture I had
seen or was to see thereafter, for on that spot of their playful choice were scattered the prostrate bodies of
all those fine little Indian boys, cold in death... The gun-fire had blazed across their playground in a way that permitted no escape.
They must have fallen like grass before the sickle.
Charles Allen
For several days the dead Lakotas were left where they had fallen. While the army contended with sporadic
fighting that broke out on the reservation. Finally, after a heavy snowfall, a burial party arrived at Wounded
Knee, dug a pit, and dumped in the frozen bodies.
On January 15th, 1891, the 4,000 remaining Ghost dancers finally surrendered to General Miles. Armed Indian
resistance in the West had ended.
"Wounded Knee happened yesterday. For Lakota people, Wounded Knee is today. Wounded Knee represents all
the frustrations of those years and years and years on the reservation. Even though it happened in 1890, it's
fresh in Lakota peoples' minds and in their hearts. That tragedy, that destruction, that devastating thing that
happened to them, it exists today. It exists in our hearts and our minds, the way we think when we see about,
when we talk about Indian-White relations, that's the first thing that comes to mind. We'll never forget Wounded
Knee."
Rick Williams
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/eight/likegrass.htm
Article Inventory
1. Identify the following:
A. Chief Sitting Bull
B. Ghost Dances
C. Gen. Nelson Miles
D. Chief Big Foot
E. Wounded Knee
2. What was Sitting Bull’s last vision AND how did that vision become fulfilled?
3. What were the Ghost Dances and what was their purpose?
4. Compare Chief Big Foot’s intentions of going to Pine Ridge Reservation with those of Gen. Nelson Miles.
5. How did things become violent at Wounded Knee AND what impact has this event had in the minds of many
Native Americans?