How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [113]
The Indian police, now under McLaughlin’s command, broke into Sitting Bull’s cabin, ordered him to awake, dress, and come with them. There was tragic irony in this situation. Many of the arresting officers had ridden with Sitting Bull and stood by his side through the dog days of the 1870s. But Sitting Bull was an old man now, impotent against the white onslaught, biding his time to the end. As he awaited the saddling of his horse, his remaining loyal followers gathered about him, determined not to let him go. It was a situation that could not end peacefully. At that moment a lieutenant named Bullhead moved in to grab Sitting Bull. A warrior named Catch the Bear pulled out his rifle and shot Bullhead in the side, who, as he twirled and fell shot Sitting Bull in the chest. Gunfire rang out on both sides, and a bullet found its mark in Sitting Bull’s head. He died on the spot. Bizarrely, Sitting Bull’s horse had been given to him by Buffalo Bill Cody, who had trained the horse to “dance” in his Wild West Show whenever it heard gunfire. As it was being led to its master’s cabin gunshots broke out and it began to dance. The horse, said the Indians in a final defiance of the white’s prohibition against their new religion, was itself doing the Ghost Dance.
The other Indian leader of great import was the Sioux Chief Big Foot. Following the Sitting Bull debacle, Big Foot was ordered to come to Pine Ridge to help negotiate a peace settlement. On his way he passed near the encampment of Kicking Bear, the Lakota Sioux who introduced the “bulletproof vest” into the Ghost Dance. General Nelson Miles, looking for a fight, saw this as a potentially hostile action on Big Foot’s part and moved in to investigate. The commanding major encountered the now sick (with pneumonia) Big Foot and his small, travel-weary band, and ordered them to camp at a creek near the Pine Ridge agency, called Wounded Knee.
On December 28, 1890, 120 men and 230 women and children set up their tepees for the night. Surrounding them were over 500 heavily armed U.S. cavalry troops, Indian scouts working for the Army, and four Hotchkiss artillery cannons. The next morning Big Foot’s people were ordered to relinquish all weapons. Some guns were surrendered, but not all. The soldiers went into the tepees to look for more. Meanwhile, Yellow Bird, Big Foot’s holy man, launched into the Ghost Dance, reminding his men that the shirts they wore would be impenetrable by the soldiers’ bullets. The officers ordered the Indians to strip, hoping to reveal hidden weapons. It was a freezing December winter day. Some of the men refused to obey. The soldiers moved in to frisk them. One spirited young Indian named Black Coyote pulled out a new rifle he had recently purchased, announcing he would not give it up. Two soldiers rushed him from behind and grabbed the rifle. At that moment the Ghost Dancing Yellow Bird threw a handful of dirt into the air, declaring that this was a symbol of the renewal of the Earth promised by their Messiah.
What happened next was much less symbolic. White officers thought it was a signal for the Indians to attack. By chance Black Coyote’s gun discharged harmlessly into the air, but it triggered Sioux and soldiers to open fire upon one another. Stray bullets found women, children, and Big Foot in their tepees. Those who managed to make a dash from the camp were cut down by the artillery cannons, firing exploding shells one per second. When it was all over 250 Sioux men, women, and children were dead.
Two weeks after Wounded Knee the last of the Ghost Dancers came out of the Badlands and capitulated to the United States Army. On January 15, 1891, the defiant Kicking Bear gave up his rifle to General Miles at the Pine Ridge agency, and his cause to all eternity. The Ghost Dance was over—it was not the beginning of the end of the Indians, it was