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Great
Spirit: One of the
names used by the Plains Indians.
Other names were All-Being, Mysterious One,
Grandfather, and Old Man.
The Ghostdanceshield was perhaps the
most rigorous of all Plains Indian shields. The
shield illustrates a vision of spiritual power
residing in the dome of the sky.
The Ghostdance :
In 1889, rumors of a miraculous Indian redemption
began to emerge. In Nevada, during a solar
eclipse, a young Paiute mystic by the name of
Wovoka had fallen into trance. When he awoke, he
told others that he had been taken into the
Spirit World and had received revelations of
great future events. The dead would rise. The
buffalo would return in the millions. The whites
would disappear.
The precepts of this new faith called for no
fighting, no war, nothing that resembled war, no
stealing, no lying, no cruelty. Followers of this
faith were expected to perform a dance, one that
Wovoka had learned while in the Spirit World. The
ritual dance was the essence of simplicity. Each
of the worshippers, painted with sacred red
pigment, shuffled counterclockwise in a circle,
moving slowly at first but picking up tempo while
singing songs of resurrection. Many of the
participants fell into trance and awoke to tell
tales of meeting with dead relatives and seeing
hosts of buffalo roaming the Plains.
This faith came to be called the Ghost Dance
Religion by curious whites because of the
emphasis on resurrection and reunion with the
dead.
Like other peoples who had picked up a new
religion, the Sioux added a unique touch of their
own -- a small alteration, but one that appeared
to taint the basic innocence of the rite.
They began dancing in loose shirts, adorned with
feathers or other trimmings and decorated with
[what the whites saw as] curious cabalistic
designs. White men inquired after the meaning and
function of these garments, which they called
ghost shirts. They were advised that the shirts
were sacred and impervious armor against an
attacker's bullets.
The reply stirred unease in whites, then outright
alarm. What need for armor, unless a mass
uprising was being plotted. Agent James
McLaughlin reported, "It would seem
impossible that any person, no matter how
ignorant, could be brought to believe such absurd
nonsense, but the infection has been so
pernicious that many of our very best Indians
appear dazed and undecided when talking of
it."
McLaughlin also [mistakenly] reported that
"the new religion was managed from the
beginning, as far as the Standing Rock Sioux were
concerned, by Sitting Bull, [Tatanka-Yotanka
(1831-1890)] who... having lost his former
influence over the Sioux, planned to import and
use it to reestablish himself in the leadership
of the people, whom he might then lead in safety
in any desperate enterprise which he might
direct."
From Washington came orders alerting the Army to
take up positions to contain and put down any
outbreak. The sudden and highly visible presence
of troops in turn alarmed the Indians.
Distrustful bands, fearing massacre by the
whites, left the vicinity of their agencies and
headed for the Badlands. The Army, as
apprehensive in its way as the Sioux were in
theirs, mobilized to round them up.
On December 14, 1890, having received word that
Sitting Bull was determined to visit the Pine
Ridge Agency south of Standing Rock, McLaughlin
had him immediately arrested. During the arrest,
Sitting Bull protested. His followers, having
heard his shout, acted. One of them fired a rifle
at one of the arresting officers (a fellow Sioux)
named Lt. Bull Head. As the police chief fell, he
managed to put a bullet into Sitting Bull.
General gunfire erupted, taking the lives of
Sitting Bull, six policemen and eight of Sitting
Bull's followers. The killing of the chief
exacerbated the turmoil that was already sweeping
the reservation lands. Bands of Sioux fled, all
frightened, many of them still holding onto the
hope of deliverance through the Ghost Dance
miracle. |
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