Wounded Knee: The Ties of Religion and Violence
On the morning of December 29, 1890, many Sioux Indians (estimated at above two hundred) died at the hands of the United States Army near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Indians were followers of the Ghost Dance religion, devised by Wovoka, a Paiute prophet, as a spiritual outlet for Indian repression by whites. The United States Army set out to intercept this group of Native Americans because they performed the controversial Ghost Dance. Both whites’ and the Sioux’s misunderstanding of an originally peaceful Indian religion culminated in the Battle of Wounded Knee. This essay first shows how the Ghost Dance came about, its later adaptation by the Sioux, and whites’ fear and misunderstanding of the Dance, then it appraises the U.S. military’s conduct during the conflict, and American newspaper coverage of events at Wounded Knee.
The Ghost Dance prophet Wovoka was born in 1865 into the Paiute tribe of Nevada. In his early twenties, Wovoka experienced a significant tuning point in his life when he recovered from a coma at the same time of a solar eclipse (Hittman 17). He had been deathly ill with a severe fever that sent him into a coma. After recovering, Wovoka spoke of being transported to the spirit world and of speaking with the Great Spirit. Wovoka felt he had been given special powers and sought to help the Indian population. Also known as Jack Wilson, Wovoka endured to unite the Indian nations with a message of
patience, kindness, and love. The Indians desperately needed hope and guidance in a time of great depression and anguish. The Indians had been uprooted from their natural homes by the encroachment of white settlers on their lands. The con...
... middle of paper ...
..., Call No. F96.A3795
Last Days of the Sioux Nation, Robert M. Utley, 1961
(ch. 11 & 12 contained in WKPub; all pg numbers are in reference to that appearance)
“Some Phases of the Recent Indian War.” Cited from Kerstetter, “Spin Doctors at Santee: Missionaries and the Dakota-Language Reporting of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee.” Western Historical Quarterly 1997
New York Times, “A Fight with the Hostiles.” December 30, 1890 p.1 c.4 New York Tribune, “Fighting at Pine Ridge.” January 1, 1891 p.1 c.3
“The agent further states that Sitting Bull is high priest and leading apostle of this latest Indian absurdity.”
- R.V. Belt, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Oct. 24, 1890. “If he fights, destroy him.”
- Fayette W. Roe, 1st Lieut. 3d Infty, A.D.C., in a letter to Maj. Whitside of the 7th
Calvary, in reference to the Miniconjous chief Big Foot.
Fox, R. (2008). Battle of the Little Big Horn. Retrieved April 30, 2014, from International Encyclopedia
of Native American Culture as a Means of Reform,” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 1
Banks, D., Erodes, R. (2004). Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. Ojibwa Warrior. Retrieved January 20, 2005, from http://www.oupress.com/bookdetail.asp?isbn=0-8061-3580-8
Mao Zedong was born December 26, 1893 and lived until September 9 in 1976 when he died in Beijing China. Mao Zedong died from the Motor neuron disease. Mao Zedong was born into a peasant family in the place Shoshanna near Hunan. During the years of 1928 throughout 1931. Mao Zedong and others that worked with Mao Zedong established armies in the hinterlands and created the Red Army which was known as the most feared “army” in china during the time of the revolution.
Through the shocking and troubling graphic detail of human suffering and the physical effect of radiation and burns caused by the dropping of the atomic bomb Hersey exposes to the reader the deeply disturbing physical impact of a nuclear attack. In the book when Hersey writes about Mr. Tanimoto helping people out of the river he uses the sentence, He reached down and took a woman by the hands but her skin slipped off in a huge glove like piece, to shock the reader with something a person would only expect to find in a horror movie. By him putting that sentence in the text Hersey exposes the physical effect a nuclear attack has on the human body and suggest we should never let this happen again. When the characters of miss Sasaki, a clerk in her young twenties who is crushed by a bookshelves that fall on her from the impact of the bomb and is severely injured and left crippled the author show that the bomb didn’t only affect people be directly burning them or by radiation but also by the structural damage. Another sentence John Hersey uses to expose the physical impact of a nuclear attack is, their faces were wholly burned, their eye sockets were hollow, and the fluid from their melted eyes had...
The Indians were being confined to crowed reservations that were poorly run, had scarce game, alcohol was plentiful, the soil was poor, and the ancient religious practices were prohibited. The Indians were not happy that they had been kicked off there land and were now forced to live on a reservation. The Indians then began to Ghost Dance a form of religion it is said that if the Indians were to do this trance like dance the country would be cleansed of white intruders. Also dead ancestors and slaughtered buffalo would return and the old ways would be reborn in a fruitful land. Once the Bureau of Indian affairs noticed what was going on they began to fear this new religion would lead to warfare. The white peoplewere scared that this new dance was a war dance. They called for army protection. Army was called in to try to curbed this new religion before it could start a war.
Atiwaneto “Speech Resisting Colonial Expansion 1752”, in The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America, ed. Colin G. Calloway (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 127
“Not again,” an article published by Arundhati Roy in the British newspaper, The Guardian, is a scathing denunciation of the United States and its current expansionism. Though Roy certainly is not representative of Indian public opinion on the United States war on Iraq—or on any subject for that matter—her article does manage to bring up several issues that are of importance to India as a developing country. Through her primary message of denouncing U.S. foreign policy, Roy also addresses two issues that are central to India today: the potential nuclear conflict with
“What have the ‘hostiles done? It seems to be so far a white man’s war” (Qtd. in Hines 30). The Indians that were killed at Wounded Knee committed no crime on their reservation in the time before the battle (Hines 36), they only practiced religion. The Ghost Dance movement resulted in a massacre at Wounded Knee which had a lasting impact on many people.
Many Indians saw hope in the Ghost Dance religion. The Ghost Dance movement was supposed “to invoke the spirits of the dead and facilitate their resurrection” (Phillips 1). It was created by the son of Paiute shaman Wovoka who was, “known as the messiah to his followers” (Wovoka 1). Wovoka believed that the Ghost Dance would revive their loved ones, make the whites disappear, and the buffaloes would roam the Wild West once again (The Wounded Knee Massacre 1). Leaders such as Sitting Bull, Kicking Bear, and Short Bull preached Wovoka’s religion which helped it gain immense popularity. This belief gave hope to the Indians and more than 3,000 Indians gathered in the badlands of the Pine...
Stark, H. K., & Wilkins, D. E. (2011). American Indian Politics and the American Political System. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
McMurtry, Larry. 2005. Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846-1890. 10th Ed. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, U.S. policy attempted to include Native people in the protection and responsibilities of United States law. Unfortunately though, authorities saw Native beliefs and rituals as “savage or primitive obstructions” to religious and cultural integration (Brown, 2003). Between 1887 and 1934, agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs as well as Christian missionaries were given discretionary authority on any reservation. Although most violations of religious freedom did not require Congressional action, some ceremonies were restricted by Executive Order. For instance, the Dawes Act of 1887 completely restricted Native religious services and the practice of their traditional values. Other rituals that were banned included the Great Sun Dance of the Lakota and other Northern Plains Indians. The most devastating ceremonial termination was of the Ghost Dance Movement. This was an intertribal visionary an...
When John Hersey describes one of his main characters, Mr. Tanimoto, aiding people who were marooned in the river, he writes, “He reached down and took a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in a huge glove like piece.” This was specifically stated to awe the readers with something that one would only expect to find in a horror film; this sentence alone, truly brings the horror back to the shores of America. Furthermore, by inputting that sentence in the book, John Hersey exposes the disastrous and horrific effects the atomic bomb has on the human body while attempting to subconsciously suggest to the readers that the use of nuclear weapons should never take place again. When another
The new US Government was careful not to antagonize the Indians and sought to treat them with mutual respect. This is evidenced in early treaties where the term “Red Brothers” was used to convey this sentiment of equality. By 1800 interaction between the Indian and white settlers had become quite common through trade. Many Indians traded for household goods, traps and tools. The US became concerned about the cultural differences and sought to improve the Indian station in life by providi...