When they came to your land you gave them what they needed. Soon they began to take without asking, and then they took what was yours. You fought, but they were too many and they had better weapons. Some of you they forced to move when they wanted your land. Some of you they killed, or they took all of the game, so you could no longer live. They took all your land and pushed you on to small islands of reservations where you slowly starved to death and went mad.
It was amongst the people of the plains, from the Paiute, in the late 1800s that a man rose up named Wovoka. Wovoka said that if the people at the end of every six weeks danced this dance, "The Ghost Dance", the Europeans would go away, the buffalo would come back, and all those who had been killed would be returned. The people were desperate, they were hungry, they were dispossessed, and so they danced. All the plains peoples; The Crow, The Cheyenne, The Arapaho, The Shoshone, Lakota, Ogala, Dakota, and others – they all danced.
In 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, beside Wounded Knee Creek, a group of families had gathered at Chief Big Foot's Camp to dance the Ghost Dance. The remnants of the 7th army were sent to oversee, and put down. It became a massacre. Eyewitnesses who came upon the scene two days later found bodies thrown hundreds of yards from the camp – only cannon fire could have done that.
The American government at the time proclaimed it a heroic victory over renegade Indians. It was recorded so in the history books, and for many years the killing of unarmed men, women, and children was believe to be a great military victory. It wasn't until the 1970s that the truth was finally printed in books like Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown and the lie was exposed.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!