Ghost Dance

"Today is the anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, which took place in South Dakota in 1891. Twenty-two years earlier, the local tribes had signed a treaty with the United States government that guaranteed them the rights to the land around the Black Hills, which was sacred land.

But in the 1870s, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and the treaty was broken. People from the Sioux tribe were forced onto a reservation, with a promise of more food and supplies, which never came. Then in 1889, a prophet named Wovoka, from the Paiute tribe in Nevada, had a vision of a ceremony that would renew the earth, return the buffalo, and cause the white men to disappear. This ceremony was called the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance scared the white Indian Agents, and they moved in to arrest Chief Sitting Bull, who was killed in the attempt.

The next leader they focused on was Sitting Bull's half-brother, Chief Big Foot. He was leading his people to the Pine Ridge reservation, seeking safety there. But it was winter, 40 degrees below zero, and he contracted pneumonia.

Big Foot was sick, he was flying a white flag, and he was one of the leaders who had actually renounced the Ghost Dance. But the Army didn't make distinctions. They intercepted Big Foot's band and ordered them into the camp on the banks of the Wounded Knee Creek.

The next morning, federal soldiers began confiscating their weapons, and a scuffle broke out between a soldier and an Indian. The federal soldiers opened fire, killing almost 300 men, women, and children, including Big Foot.

One of the survivors was the famous medicine man Black Elk, who told his story to John Neihardt in Black Elk Speaks (1932)." From The Writer's Almanac, December 29, 2008

The Reader and the Read To

Yesterday in Bernie Hunhoff's southdakotamagazine online gem he wrote: "On This Day: August 19 In the summer of 1931, Nebraska poet laureate John Neihardt accompanied Oglala holy man Nick Black Elk to the top of Harney Peak, where Black Elk re-told of great visions he had seen during his lifetime. That conversation, and many more that continued into the spring of 1932, would form the basis for the famed Indian spirituality book, Black Elk Speaks. In his visions, Black Elk told Neihardt that he had met the guider of the universe. Reports vary, but it is believed Black Elk died on this day in 1950 at the age of 86."

On our quick four day trip to the Black Hills I read "Pirate, Pawnee and Mountain Man: The Saga of Hugh Glass" by John Myers to He Who Must Be Obeyed. Somewhere in the text Myers wrote of John G. Neihardt having acquired some information on Glass. Neihardt's "The Song of Hugh Glass" 1915, and the "The Splendid Wayfaring" 1920 are listed in the Bibliography. Myers' adventerous tale took us across two interstate highways, and two states which ate up most of two days on our own four day adventure.

Being so steeped in the history of our own childhood home lands, one thing leads to another as it always does in life. When we recovered from our rigorous travel I poked around in my various book shelves and found a book I bought at the Chadron, Nebraska Museum of the Fur Trade a few years ago, John G. Neihardt's "The Mountain Men: The Song of Three Friends-The Song of Hugh Glass-The Song of Jed Smith." New and unopened, I was delighted to find a drawn map of Hugh Glass's trails beginning at Ft. Atkinson a few miles north of our home on the Missouri River and ranging along rivers and streams to the headwaters of the Missouri and down the Platte. How I longed for a map as I read on the road.

I had always thought that Neihardt was too hard for me to read, especially to read aloud. The first chapter was lovely and of course I can read it! The rest will be saved for our afternoon recovery periods and maybe, as HWMBO suggested, take the place of evening mindless television.