In the summer of 1890, Kicking Bear and Short Bull visited Wovoka in Utah. They became enraptured by his faith and even stated that Wovoka levitated through the air above them. Wovoka spoke of the Ghost Dance. Kicking Bear and Short Bull brought the Ghost Dance back to the Dakota reservations, but in a form which lead to totally unexpected results.
Wovoka's faith was based on non-violence. In fact, he even urged his followers not to tell the wasicu what they were doing. But as interpreted by Kicking Bear and Short Bull, the Ghost Dance took on a militaristic aspect. Special garments known as Ghost Shirts were to be worn to deflect bullets fired by soldiers or settlers. Government agents were permitted to witness the Ghost Dance ceremony and were told what it meant. Kicking Bear and Short Bull assured the Lakota that the Indian Messiah would appear to them in the Spring of 1891.
All activities at the reservation were put aside, government agents and settlers were terrified by this sudden and (to them) bizarre turn of events. Newspapers spread stories of savage Indians in wild pagan practices. Tensions became overpowering in the region as the Lakota people gave all their waking hours to the Ghost Dance.
Blame for the Ghost Dance was placed on two people. Wovoka was traced as the father of the Ghost Dance and was interviewed by James Mooney, an ethnologist and anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institute. Wovoka passed a message to Mooney that he would control any militaristic uprising among the Native peoples in return for financial and food compensation from Washington. The offer was ignored. Blame was also put on Lakota elder and statesman, Sitting Bull. Ironically, Sitting Bull was apathetic to the Ghost Dance and only allowed its introduction with great caution. His initial fears were realized: government agents considered Sitting Bull responsible due to his leadership role among the Lakota. Tribal police were dispatched to arrest him, but his apprehension resulted in conflict when several Lakota fought to protect him. Sitting Bull was killed in the crossfire between supporters and Lakota tribal police on December 15, 1890.
Fourteen days after Sitting Bull's fatal shooting, the U.S. Army sought to relocate and disarm the Lakota people, who failed to stop their Ghost Dance. Big Foot took his band of three hundred from the Cheyenne River Reservation and fled south through the Badlands, eluding a reformed 7th Cavalry. On the frozen plains at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation, government troops opened fire on the overwhelmingly unarmed Lakota people with Hotchkiss gatling guns, forcing the killing field survivors into the deep gullies where they were hunted and massacred by 7th Cal horsemen. At least 290 souls were lost. Many lie in the original trench dug for their disposal, a heartless display of American Indian policy in the waning days of the century. Thirty-three soldiers died, most from friendly fire; 20 Medals of Honor were presented to surviving soldiers.
As news of Wounded Knee spread throughout the Native nations, the Ghost Dance died quickly. Wovoka's prophecies were seen as hollow; the land would not be returned through divine intervention. With the same suddenness of its birth, the Ghost Dance disappeared.
Wovoka himself virtually vanished into obscurity. In his later years, he exhibited himself at sideshows in county fairs and worked as an extra in silent movie Westerns. (The one surviving photograph of Wovoka was taken on the set of a film.) By the time of his death on September 20, 1932, he was virtually forgotten by both white and Native peoples. It would not be until the 1970s and the birth of Native American activism that the story of the Ghost Dance was told again.
The tragedy of Wovoka is a legacy of pain and suffering among the very people he wanted to save. The songs of the Ghost Dance are silent today and the dream of Wovoka vanished. The Christian principles which he laced into his theology were ignored by the soldiers and settlers who held allegiance to Christ and yet destroyed the Native way of life with a brutality unknown in the Gospel teachings.
This, then, is not the tale of a great hunter or of a great warrior, or of a great traveler, although I have made much meat in my time and fought for my people both as boy and man, and have gone far and seen strange lands and men. So also have many others done, and better than I. These things I shall remember by the way, and often they may seem to be the very tale itself, as when I was living them in happiness and sorrow. But now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people's heart with flowers and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people's dream that died in bloody snow. Ben Black Elk
Another one crosses the border.
