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S O U T H D A K O T A O NE DAY WHEN HE WAS 14, a boy named Slow followed his father and some other Hunkpapa Sioux warriors on a raid against the

neighboring Crow people. This was around 1845, in what is now South Dakota. The boy carried only a stick in his hand, but he rode straight toward a Crow warrior who was aim- ing an arrow at him and knocked the warrior to the ground.

For Slow's bravery, his father gave him a new name: Tatanka Yotanka, or Sitting Bull,

Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee

The massive Indian removals of the

1830s marked the end of the first phase

of Indian conquest. Later, as the United

States set its sights across the entire

continent/ there was no "outside" land

to which Indians could be banished.

Instead, the tribes were corraled

inside the fixed borders of

reservations — mostly barren

patches of land that the whites

hadn't yet found a use for. While

the Civil War was raging over

the destiny of the slaves, the

Indian Wars signaled the

fate of another people. The

contest reached its costly

climax in 1890, on a South

Dakota Sioux reservation

called Pine Ridge.

after the solitary buffalo that came to the father one night as a sign. Sitting Bull earned membership in the elite Strong Heart Society of warriors before he turned 17. He later became the society's leader.

Sitting Bull came of age during a time of sweeping change for his people. Gathering on the horizon was an enemy much more

powerful than the Crows. The U.S. gov- ernment was starting to view the Great Plains as more than just a dumping ground for the eastern Indians. California gold fever brought herds of fortune-seekers over the grass- lands. Railroads followed, sprout-

ing supply depots and settlements along the way. Now the Plains tribes

saw their worlds shifting and shrinking as the worlds of the Choctaws and the Cherokees and others had two decades before. The government's policy toward the Indians amounted to a war strategy: Divide and conquer.

Sitting Bull was determined to

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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 2/27/2017 4:24 PM via UNIV OF UTAH - MARRIOTT LIBRARY AN: 160276 ; Carnes, Jim, Tauss, Herbert.; Us and Them? : A History of Intolerance in America Account: s9010286

government

forcibly

"purchased"

nine million

acres from the

reservation

Sioux.

Opposite page. Sitting

Bull toured the U.S. and

Canada with William F.

Cody's Wild West Show

from 1885 to 1887.

resist. In 1868, he led a group of Sioux who refused to sign a treaty confining the tribe to a reservation. He knew that such treaties had often been broken, and he also knew that, within such narrow boundaries, his people's way of life would end. Sitting Bull's defiance inspired thousands of Indians from many Plains tribes to join the cause.

It wasn't long before the Army, fulfilling the Indians' worst fears, violated the Sioux treaty to prospect for gold in the Black Hills. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was the leader of this expedition. In 1876, after the Sioux refused to sell the Black Hills, the government launched attacks against Sitting Bull's branch and declared all of the reserva- tion-dwellers prisoners of war.

On June 17 of that year, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and other fugitive Sioux surprised an Army unit at Rosebud

Creek in southeastern Montana and forced it to retreat. Not far to the west, along the Little Bighorn River, the victorious Indians stopped to hunt awhile and rest their horses. Here Sitting Bull performed the Sun Dance, a special ritual for bringing on visions. Afterwards he described what he had seen: government soldiers dropping out of the sky like grasshoppers.

T he following week, Custer's 7th Cavalry approached the sprawling riverside camp. No one knows why the comman-

der ordered his men to charge the Indians before the expected reinforcements arrived. Of more than 200 U.S. troops and their mounts, only one horse, named Comanche, survived the resulting slaughter. The incident lent a bitter flavor to the nation's centennial celebra- tions on July 4.

Sitting Bull's legions knew that they would pay for the blow they had dealt the Army. The gathered tribes went their separate ways, some onto the open plains, others onto reservations. Sitting Bull kept his faith that the Indians could hold out against the white man's greed. Meanwhile, the government forcibly

"purchased" nine million acres from the reservation Sioux.

For five more years, Sitting Bull and his people wandered in the wilderness, resisting U.S. demands for their surrender. They sought refuge in Canada but finally, on the promise of a pardon for their leader, turned themselves in at Fort Buford, Dakota Territory, on July 19, 1881. The government agents broke their word and arrested Sitting Bull. He was held in military prison for two years before being released into the custody of Interior

I N C O N T E X T

Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull

L ike Sitting Bull, William F. Cody demon-

strated his bravery and skill as a warrior

early in life. He learned to wrangle

horses and fight Indians as a boy in Kansas.

During the Civil War, he served as a teenage

scout for the 9th Kansas Cavalry in its cam-

paigns against the Comanches and Kiowas.

When the Union Pacific Railway began

laying its tracks across the continent, Cody

found work as a buffalo hunter supplying

the huge construction crews with meat. He

earned his nickname by reportedly killing

4,280 of the animals in an eight-month

stretch.

At the time the Civil War ended, the

buffalo on the Plains numbered around 12

million. To the 31 Indian tribes of the region,

these animals were a sacred gift of food,

clothing and shelter. The white man saw

them differently.

Professional marksmen like Buffalo Bill

were followed by tourists who fired on graz-

ing herds for sport. The discovery of a com-

mercial process for making buffalo leather

spurred the slaughter of more than 9 million

head in the early 1870s. By the turn of the

century, the entire buffalo population of the

U.S. would be slashed to fewer than 50.

While Sitting Bull (named for a buffalo)

was fighting for the rights of his people to

live as they always had, Buffalo Bill Cody

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Department agents at Standing Rock

Reservation.

Through vivid, often exaggerated

newspaper accounts, Sitting Bull's exploits

had brought him international fame. The

government arranged public appearances

for the captive chief in 15 U.S. cities during

1884. The following year, he joined Buffalo

Bill Cody's traveling Wild West Show

(see sidebar).

Sitting Bull returned to the reservation

in 1887. The government was trying to

force the Sioux to sell more land, so the

chief took up his old cause of resistance.

Within a couple of years, the govern-

ment had won again and divided the

reduced reservation into six parts. Life for

the Sioux grew more and more miserable.

Diseases swept through the reservations

like winds of death. Carrots and potatoes

withered in the hard ground.

Around this same time, a new religious

movement was spreading among Indian

tribes all across the west. Far away in

and others were helping to make that impossible. With the herds depleted, life as the Sioux and the Cheyenne and the Arapaho and the Pawnee and their neighbors knew it came to an end.

On July 17,1876, just a few weeks alter Custer's Last Stand at Little Bighorn,

Buffalo Bill gave white Americans a taste of revenge against the Indians by taking the

scalp of Yellow Hair, the son of a Cheyenne chief. This deed was not only a brazen act of warfare but also a canny business maneuver.

Between Indian fights, Cody had often performed in stage plays about the West. After his decisive triumph over Yellow Hair,

re-enactments of the encounter became the

centerpiece of a nationwide theatrical tour. The buffalo hunter and Indian fighter had become America's most popular showman.

In 1883, Cody organized a combina- tion circus, rodeo and traveling museum called the Wild West Show, which became an overnight sensation. In 1885, he had lit- tle trouble persuading the reservation agents

to let him take Sitting Bull off their hands. This arrangement was conducted at

least partially on Sitting Bull's terms. He asked for and received $50 a month pay- ment and the full proceeds from posing for photographs. Other theatrical agents had used captured Indians as objects of mock- ery, but Cody treated Sitting Bull with digni- ty. Instead of leading other Indians into staged defeats, the Sioux chief rode his horse silently and alone into the arena. Although audiences hissed and booed, newspapers around the country and in Canada reported that the image of the soli- tary leader inspired a general sense of awe. Behind the scenes, Sitting Bull enjoyed the company of the other performers, especially the sure-shot Annie Oakley, whom he offered to adopt.

The respect that Cody showed Sitting Bull during his two years in the Wild West Show helped to forge a surprising friend- ship between the two former enemies. After Sitting Bull's death, many chiefs followed his lead and took advantage of the relative freedom the Wild West Show offered.

DOCUMENTD O C U M E N T

How the West Was Lost

A writer named John L. O'Sullivan predicted in 1845 "the fulfillment of

our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." He sensed, as many other Americans did, the unfold- ing of a divine plan for the

country's expansion. Just four years later, the discovery of gold in California turned "mani- fest destiny" into a stam-

pede. Forty-niners (men seeking their fortunes in the gold fields in 1849)

flocked west by the thou-

sands. San Francisco was their boomtown. Calls for

statehood came swift and loud.

With the admission of

California to the Union in 1850, the western border of the U.S. leaped from Iowa and Missouri and Texas to the Pacific in a single bound. In more

than just a political sense, the Indians in between were surrounded. The U.S. Senate imposed the tot-

lowing conditions in its treaty with the Western Shoshoni in 1863.

the telegraph and over-

land stage lines having been established and operated by companies under the authority of the United States through a part of the Shoshonee

country, it is expressly agreed that the same may

be continued without hindrance, molestation,

or injury from the people

(Continued on page 62)

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Nevada, a Paiute Indian farmer named Wovoka was telling his people about a vision he'd had in which all the ancestors and buffalo rose from the dead, restoring the old Indian way of life forever. In a time of increasing pressure from whites, Indians listened eagerly to this message of deliver- ance. They began performing a dance that Wovoka said would make the vision come true.

Wovoka's movement, which whites called the Ghost Dance, combined earlier Indian prophecies with elements of Christianity that Wovoka had picked up from missionaries and white neighbors. From the Mormons, for example, he may have borrowed the idea of sacred garments that protect the wearer from harm. Stories circulated that Wovoka himself was the new Messiah, Jesus Christ returned to save the Indian people.

When Sitting Bull heard about the energy and excitement that the Ghost Dance was stirring among other tribes, he thought about his own desperate people. They were practically starving on govern- ment rations, and the government had told them that they could no longer supplement their diets by hunting game. The winter ahead promised to be a grim one on the carved-up Sioux reservations.

S itting Bull felt the new religion might at least give his people something to hope for. In October 1890, he invited

some Sioux from another area to come teach the Ghost Dance. The religion quick- ly attracted many followers with its promise of Indian victory and glory. Sioux men, women and children were soon so busy dancing- in the snow that no work was getting done. Houses, schools and stores stood empty. The dancers claimed that the special shirts they wore would repel the white man's bullets.

The whites had laws to protect their own freedom of religion, but the Ghost Dance frightened them. The religious frenzy seemed more a portent of rebellion than a broken culture's desperate attempt to make sense of its collapsing world. Newspapers across the country fanned the flames of sus- picion. In mid-November, Pres. Benjamin

(Continued from page 61)

How the west was lost

of said bonds. ... And

Pacific ocean, it is stipu- lated by the said bands

that the said railway or its branches may be located constructed a

operated, and without molestation from them, through any portion of

pied by them.

be explored and

when mines ar discovered, they may be

agricultural settlements formed, and ranches established whenever they may be required.

... The said bands agre

that whenever the President of the United

further, it being under- stood that prevision had

been made by the gov- ernment of the United States for the construc- tion of a railway from the plains wwest to the

country claimed or occu-

It is further agreed by the parties hereto, that the Shoshonce country

prospected for gold and silver, or other minerals;

worked, and mining and

States shall deem it expedient for them to abandon the rooming life, which they now hood, and become lead, and become hords- men or agriculturalists, he is hereby authorized to make such reserva- tions for; their use as he may deem bnecssary

within the country above described; and they do

also hereby agree to remove their camps to such reservations as he may indicate, and to reside and remain therein.

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Harrison directed the Secretary of War to suppress "any threatened out-break among the Indians." The Indian Bureau in Washington ordered its reser- vation agents to telegraph the names of suspect- ed troublemakers. One of the names on this list was Sitting Bull's.

Because of his celebrated his- tory, the govern- ment knew it had to carry out Sitting Bull's arrest with extreme caution. The general in charge enlisted the aid of Buffalo

Bill Cody, who agreed to use his friendship, along with a few gifts, to coax Sitting Bull's surrender. Cody travelled to the reservation, but at the last minute a nervous agent tele- graphed the President and convinced him to cancel the plan.

The Ghost Dancers had been assem- bling in the Badlands on Pine Ridge Reservation. On December 11, Sitting Bull asked for permission to go there. Now the government believed it could justify having him arrested.

Forty-three armed reservation police surrounded his cabin before dawn on December 15. A crowd of Ghost Dancers gathered in the cold. When Sitting Bull came out, they tried to prevent his capture, but in the scuffle a policeman shot Sitting Bull

through the brain. News of Sitting Bull's death shook the

Sioux like a lightning bolt. Part of hi? band turned to Chief Big Foot for guidance. Big Foot was another Sioux resistance leader who had been hiding out with some supporters in the Badlands. He believed that Chief Red Cloud at Pine Ridge, who was

Above left. Sitting Bull hoped his own fame

would call attention to the

plight of his people.

Above right and below.

Ration day at Pine Ridge

brought hundreds of Sioux

women to stand in line for

bacon, cornmeal, flour,

coffee and sugar. In 1890, the government cut rations

by 20 percent.

US and THEM • 63

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experienced in dealing with whites, offered the best chance for protection from the government. So he set out to take his followers there.

The refugees had little food. Many of them walked barefoot on the frozen ground, while oth- ers used torn strips of blanket to bind their feet. Sleet covered their clothes and gave them a glassy shine. Big Foot developed a deep rattling cough. His nose bled fre- quently, and he refused to eat. On December 25, he directed his men to kill the youngest horses and ration the meat.

When cavalry troops intercepted the party three days later, the exhausted Indians raised tattered flour sacks as truce flags. Big Foot formally surrendered and received an ambulance wagon to ride in. The troops then herded their captives — 120 men and 230 women and children — toward the Army camp at Wounded Knee Creek. The shoes on the soldiers' horses rang out against the earth, which was hard as iron.

Although the Indians had surrendered and were clearly in no position to put up a fight, the situation at the camp was tense.

Two cavalry units guarded the Sioux tepees, and Hotchkiss machine guns (with a range of two miles) sat atop a nearby rise. By morning, more guns had been added.

After a breakfast of Army rations, the Indians were ordered to give up all weapons they were hiding. A few rifles were handed over, but not enough to satisfy the officers. Soldiers herded the Sioux into a cluster and searched the tepees, collecting any knives, tools or guns they could find. They searched the women and made them unwrap their babies in the cold.

At the edge of the crowd, a medicine man named Yellow Bird lifted his arms and started a Ghost Dance. As he danced, he sang —about strong Sioux hearts and

D O C U M E N T

"A Superior and Civilized Nation"

In 1913, members of the Pueblo group challenged the degree of control that

Congress exercised over tribal affairs. The U.S. Supreme Court issued the following statements in its decision (United

States v. Sandovol).

Always living in separate and isolated communities, adhering to primitive

modes of life, largely influ- enced by superstition and Fetishism, and chiefly gov-

erned according to crude customs inherited from their ancestors, [the Pueblos] are essentially a

simple, uninformed and inferior people.... As a superior and civilized nation, [the U.S. govern-

ment has both] the power and the duty of exercising a fostering care and pro-

tection over all dependent Indian communities within its borders.

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

about soldiers' bullets falling harmless on the prairie. The people listened. Yellow Bird's strange chant worried and angered the officers. A quick search of some Indians turned up two more rifles. An attempt to seize a third one caused it to fire.

The single gunshot set the soldiers in motion. They raised their rifles, took aim and began firing. Some of the Indians grabbed hatchets and knives from the surrendered pile. Many fell dead. Others, including Big Foot, died where they had been sitting under blan- kets to keep warm. A few stray Army bullets

killed soldiers. Then the hell-bursts of the Hotchkiss guns tore holes in the tepees. Thunder echoed. The blood of women and children stained the ground.

Soldiers cried, "Remember Custer!" and kept firing. The Hotchkiss guns now fixed their aim on a ravine where some Indians hid. Most of those who fled were hunted down and shot.

When the guns went silent, the soldiers removed their own 25 dead. A blizzard that night laid a clean blanket over the corpses of 290 Sioux. •*

Wounded Knee Revisited

I n ] 973, Pine Ridge Reservation again became a site of confrontation

between Native Americans and the U.S. government. On February 27, armed members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), numbering around 200, seized control of the town of Wounded Knee.

They proclaimed them- selves the "Independent Oglala Sioux Nation" and

demanded that the govern- ment implement changes in tribal leadership and review all Indian treaties as well as the treatment of native peo- ples in general.

Federal marshals imme- diately surrounded the ham- let. In the nine-day siege that followed, two Oglala Sioux were killed and a federal marshal was wounded. On May 8, the government

promised to negotiate on the group's demands. AIM mem- bers surrendered their

weapons and ended the standoff.

In response to this and other protests by Native Americans, Congress in 1975

passed the Indian Self- Determination and Education Assistance Act, which paid tribes to take over certain ser- vices from the federal govern- ment. Some groups, charging that the act had little sub- stance, predicted a much longer struggle to overcome the government's former poli- cy of Indian "termination."

Opposite page, above. Big

Foot, wounded in the first

round of gunfire on Dec.

29, 1890, was shot dead

later in the morning.

Opposite page, below. On Jan. 1 and 2, 1891, the

frozen corpses were buried

in a mass grave.

Left. Sacred Heart Catholic

Church was one of several

buildings seized during the Oglala Sioux occupation of

Wounded Knee in February

1973.

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IN CONTEXT

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