The Ghost Dancers by The Ghost Dancers (retail) (epub)

Author:The Ghost Dancers (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647790257
Publisher: University of Nevada Press

GHOST DANCING

Stories never die; they are carried in the wind, choosing, as they must, the ears of each generation they will enter. Winter winds on the Pine Ridge Reservation are cruel for the most part. The force of the lingering cold of hardship blows through the cracks, under doors, and through broken windows. They remind us that it is easy to die, and summer is far away.

Last weekend, hoping to accelerate springtime, I bought some houseplants in the White border town of Martin. I got two ferns and two English ivies. I put them in my living room and went to Pine Ridge Village on errands. When I came back, I found the furnace had shut down. The house was like an icebox. The plants had frozen. I picked them up and took them outside to the garbage can. Standing in the bitter-cold sunshine, I glanced at the house of my White neighbors a mile or so away. White sheets hung from their clothesline. They whipped around in unison, hopping high into the air, and when the gusts died down, slowly settling into a ghostly ballet. In the shimmering sunshine, the sheets looked like ghosts dancing, dancing, dancing.

On the morning of December 15, 1890, units of Sioux police under a Lieutenant Bull Head left the Standing Rock Reservation with orders to arrest Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull had joined a group of Ghost Dancers on the western end of the Cheyenne River Reservation. He resisted arrest, shots were fired, and a dozen men were killed, including Chief Sitting Bull.

Big Foot, the Minnecoujou leader, was camped nearby with three hundred followers. His band had decided to leave the area and go to Pine Ridge. Some say they went because they feared reprisals from the crazy Whites. Others say they went because their supplies were low and they needed to replenish them. In South Dakota and bordering states, irresponsible White journalists described Big Foot’s trek from the Cheyenne River to Pine Ridge in terms of a general uprising. Their newspapers made pointed reference to the Santee uprising of 1862 and the attendant killings of many White people. They actually compared the Ghost Dancers to the Santee Sioux, who had raided many towns in Minnesota and spilled hundreds and hundreds of gallons of White blood in the process.

Tensions mounted. Troupers of the Seventh Cavalry were called in to escort Big Foot and his followers to Pine Ridge. When they encamped at Wounded Knee, scuffles broke out between the soldiers and the Indians. Some say a shot was fired and a cavalry officer was killed. The soldiers opened fire with rifles and cannons.

Eighty-four Indian men, forty-four Indian women, and eighteen Indian children were killed. Their warm, red blood trickled down from the snow-covered ground of Wounded Knee.

Wovoka, a Numa, or as White people called them, a Northern Paiute, was born in Smith Valley, Nevada, in 1856. Later, he moved to the nearby White township of Yerington, once known as “Pizen [Poison] Switch.” He went by

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