The Lakotas and the Black Hills by Jeffrey Ostler

Author:Jeffrey Ostler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

After a time, some of the dancers lost consciousness and went to the “land of the spirits.” There they saw a beautiful country where their relatives were happy and the land was alive. When they awoke, it was painful for them to look upon the barren land. As they related their experiences to the others, however, they created hope that the world could be transformed. The songs and visions of the Lakota Ghost Dance did not focus on specific places within Lakota country. In calling for the renewal of the world, however, the Ghost Dancers certainly implicitly envisioned the return of Paha Sapa.

Not all Lakotas took up the Ghost Dance. Leaders with a history of selective cooperation with the United States like Young Man Afraid of His Horses, John Grass, and Gall counseled against the new movement and feared that it would lead to violence. On the other hand, leaders such as Crow Dog and Sitting Bull who had generally resisted reservation authority encouraged the Ghost Dance. Other leaders were caught in the middle. Red Cloud apparently did not believe the Ghost Dance would work and probably feared a crackdown. At the same time, however, he advocated for the Ghost Dancers’ right to dance, saying that the teachings of the movement were identical to those of Christianity. Overall, between a quarter and a third of Lakotas became Ghost Dancers. Because the dance was a direct threat to the government’s efforts to control the Lakotas and promote their assimilation, in the late summer and fall of 1890, government agents began to take steps to suppress the Lakota Ghost Dancers’ activities. By this time, the agents had developed small police forces consisting of tribal members, who enlisted for material rewards and, in some instances, because they thought they could serve as a buffer between the agents and their people. Agents at Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Cheyenne River dispatched their police to stop Ghost Dances, though the police were outnumbered and returned without making arrests. These episodes, however, caused the Ghost Dancers to become increasingly concerned that the United States might escalate the situation by sending troops to suppress their activities. Thus, to protect themselves from bullets should the army attack, they began to wear “ghost shirts” (and dresses) painted with emblems from their visions.20

During October and early November, some of the agents at the Lakota reservations began calling for the army to send troops to help them restore order, with some even suggesting that the Ghost Dancers were planning an “outbreak” in which they would leave the reservation and attack nearby settlers. At the same time, in some of their reports, the agents speculated that the dance might subside on its own with the onset of cold weather. Some agents proposed a more moderate course of action, calling simply for the arrest of key Ghost Dance leaders. In early November, the War Department began an investigation of the Ghost Dance, which concluded that there was little danger of an “outbreak” and that the “craze” might subside before spring.

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