Towards the end of the 19th Century, forced assimilation was the order of the day in the modern-day United States. Native Americans had their traditions and cultures washed away by the assimilations. This prompted some tribal leaders to save their cultures by inventing certain spiritual traditions. At the beginning of the year 1889, a certain religious leader of the tribe of Northern Paiute alleges to have seen a vision. Wovoka claimed to have seen God in his vision in the form of a Native American (Andersson, 2008). Following this, Wovoka started the Ghost Dance, a spiritual movement, and subsequently made a prophecy of an imminent unity of the Indian tribes. The Ghost Dance movement was meant to preserve the Native American culture from the trending activities around forced assimilation.
The Ghost Dance movement organized regular ceremonies dubbed the Ghost Dance ceremony. Wovoka claimed that the ceremony reunited the people’s spirits to those of the dead to significantly harness the power to be used in fighting the white settlers. From the Paiute tribe, the Ghost Dance practice spread through to several other Indian tribes living in the Southwest. Wovoka had prophesied the permanent banishment of the white men from their lands, and the buffalo would come to the rescue of the Native Americans (DeMallie, 1982). Many Native Americans subscribed to the Ghost Dance movement due to their lack of respect for the European view, which considered land to be property. The increasing subscription by the Native American Indians into the Ghost Dance movement worsened the relationship between Native Americans and the White Settlers. The United States Army was looking to see through continued forced assimilations
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The Wounded Knee Massacre is also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, occurred on the 29th December, 1890, near Lakota, Indian. This historical massacre claimed the lives of about three hundred people living in Lakota Indians. Many historians perceive this particular Massacre to be at the heart of the 19th Century effort by the United States Army to subdue Indians. This is a common opinion because the massacre was executed by the troops of the United States Army following an unsuccessful trial at disarming the Lakota Camp.
The Period of the Westward Expansion in the United States saw a lot of white settlers try to take plots of land from the indigenous people (Mooney, 1991). Nevertheless, these attempts received harsh resistance, which later heated up even more in the second half of the 19th Century. At the time, the Federal branch of the United States government too violated agreements earlier made with various leaders representing plain tribes. Sioux Indians were among such victims of the US violation of treaties. In the treaty, the Lakota sub-tribe of Sioux Indians was supposed to avoid lodging attacks to white settlers in exchange for food supplies, education, and other benefits from the United States Government.
The Wounded Knee Massacre commenced on 28th December 1890 after Col. James Forsyth commanded troop, the Seventh Cavalry arrived at a camp near Wounded Knee Creek. The USA troops confiscated weapons. The Lakota subtribe chief, Big Foot, had been ill with pneumonia. Initially, he had hesitated to lead his people in weapons surrender but later offered a few weapons as a show of peace, something that did not please Col. Forsyth. Among the casualties of the Wounded Knee Massacre, about 25 were United States soldiers. About fifty-one others also got wounded and were moved to the Pine Ridge Agency for medical attention. The remaining Native American Indian tribes were subjected to forceful assimilation and disarmed to reduce their resistance to the white settlers. This subsequently reduced the population of Native Americans drastically.
References
Andersson, R. H. (2008). The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890 . U of Nebraska Press.
DeMallie, R. J. (1982). The Lakota Ghost Dance: An Ethnohistorical Account. Pacific Historical Review , 51 (4), 385-405.
Mooney, J. (1991). The ghost-dance religion and Wounded Knee . Courier Corporation.
