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...
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..., 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.
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
McMurtry, Larry. 2005. Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846-1890. 10th Ed. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
If students want to learn more about their field, they should feel inclined to actually do the work on their own. Also, if a school makes each student complete at least 24 hours of community service to graduate, every student in the school will graduate with the exact same amount, which means hundreds of students are going to the workforce with no advantage over the other.
Luke 6:31 says, “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” History proves that our nation didn’t keep with verse in mind when we treated the Native Americans unfairly. Some examples of not treating them fairly was the Trail of Tears, The Massacre of Wounded Knee, and The Battle of Tippecanoe. This essay will explain how in these events Americans treated Native Americans how we shouldn’t of.
The United States government initially celebrated the Battle at Wounded Knee as the final conflict between Native Americans and the United States military - after which the western frontier was considered safe for the incoming settlers. Over 20 medals were awarded to the soldiers for their valor on the battlefield. However, the understanding has changed regarding what actually took place at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. The Hollywood version of the Battle of Wounded Knee accurately presents the case that the Battle at Wounded Knee was actually a massacre of the Sioux - the culminating act of betrayal and aggression carried out by the United States military,
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
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
Native Americans were not afforded full citizenship in the United States until 1924, therefore they were not afforded the rights of American citizens i.e. religious freedom until then. It wasn’t until 1945, that the Supreme Court held that “Freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country” (Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 148). In 1890 the Ghost Dance movement gain momentum within the Lakota. This created concern and fear among many whites in the area. A massacre at Wounded Knee on the Lakota Reservation in South Dakota was a direct result of the Euro- American fears of non-Christian people. Tisa Wegner tells us, “in 1906, Congress supported a view, amending the Dawes Act to postpone citizenship for newly allotted Indians for twenty-five-year period or until they had “adopted the habits of civilized life” (Hoxie 1995:211-238). The Native people then developed secular dance ceremonies which allowed them to continue the practice of dancing and not be perceived as a threat, they did this by having these ceremonies coincide with Euro-American
“Quantie’s weak body shuddered from a blast of cold wind. Still, the proud wife of the Cherokee chief John Ross wrapped a woolen blanket around her shoulders and grabbed the reins.” Leading the final group of Cherokee Indians from their home lands, Chief John Ross thought of an old story that was told by the chiefs before him, of a place where the earth and sky met in the west, this was the place where death awaits. He could not help but fear that this place of death was where his beloved people were being taken after years of persecution and injustice at the hands of white Americans, the proud Indian people were being forced to vacate their lands, leaving behind their homes, businesses and almost everything they owned while traveling to an unknown place and an uncertain future. The Cherokee Indians suffered terrible indignities, sickness and death while being removed to the Indian territories west of the Mississippi, even though they maintained their culture and traditions, rebuilt their numbers and improved their living conditions by developing their own government, economy and social structure, they were never able to return to their previous greatness or escape the injustices of the American people.
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...
see and feel what the Indians had to go through. Much of the literature they had
at.” Despite his failure, he is still an Indian man, searching for a proclamation of his
Fox, R. (2008). Battle of the Little Big Horn. Retrieved April 30, 2014, from International Encyclopedia
Mooney, James. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
Although the work is 40 years old, “Custer Died for Your Sins” is still relevant and valuable in explaining the history and problems that Indians face in the United States. Deloria’s book reveals the White view of Indians as false compared to the reality of how Indians are in real life. The forceful intrusion of the U.S. Government and Christian missionaries have had the most oppressing and damaging affect on Indians. There is hope in Delorias words though. He believes that as more tribes become more politically active and capable, they will be able to become more economically independent for future generations. He feels much hope in the 1960’s generation of college age Indians returning to take ownership of their tribes problems and build a better future for their children.