# A Brief History of South Dakota/Chapter 29

CHAPTER XXIX
THE MESSIAH WAR
South Dakota became a state of the Union during the period of reaction from the great Dakota boom. That boom brought to us not only many adventurers and promoters, but also a large class of honest but inexperienced persons,—mercantile clerks, factory hands, and mechanics,—who were attracted by the free government lands and who came to make farm homes, but who had no experience as farmers. Even those who knew how to farm in the eastern states found that eastern conditions did not apply to Dakota conditions and Dakota soil. The successful method of working our soil had to be learned by sore experience. It is no wonder, then, that thousands who came with high hopes of building homes and accumulating riches were sorely disappointed. Many of them, in utter discouragement, gave up their homesteads and returned to the East, where the impression became deep-rooted that Dakota was a failure. Following closely upon this reaction came a period of really bad crop years. A great drought in 1889 and 1890 made the crops in many counties a total failure.
Copyright, 1898, by Detroit Photo. Co.
Harvesting in South Dakota (near Brookings)
This religious movement among the Indians originated with a Paiute Indian named Wovoka, who lived near Pyramid Lake, Nevada. He spoke English fairly well and had some education. He claimed to have had a vision on January 1, 1889, in which he was taken up to heaven. He found it a pleasant land and full of game. He was instructed to go back to earth and preach goodness and peace and industry to his people, who, if they followed his instructions, would be reunited with their friends in the other world, where there would be no more death or sickness or old age. He was then instructed in the dance which he was commanded to bring back to his people, and which was one of the strong articles of the new faith. Wovoka had simply mingled the pagan superstitions, in which he had been reared, with the Christian religion which he had been taught.
Wovoka's teachings spread rapidly among the Indians of North America, and as they spread they were given new significance. Wovoka was an Indian Messiah, who had come to restore the dead to life, bring back the buffalo and other game to the prairie, drive away the whites, and cause the Indians to live a life of ideal happiness. In a few ​months the Sioux at Pine Ridge agency had learned of this wonderful Messiah, and so interested were they that a great council was held to discuss the matter, in which all the leading men, including Red Cloud, took part. They decided to send a delegation to Pyramid Lake to consult the Messiah and be instructed by him. Three men were sent for this purpose, the leader of whom was Short Bull. They went out in the winter of 1889, returning in the spring of 1890. They brought with them a letter from Wovoka, which said:—
"When you get home, you must make a dance to continue five days. Dance four nights and the last night keep up the dance until the morning of the fifth day, when all must bathe in the river and then disperse to their homes. You must all do in the same way. I, Wovoka, love you with all my heart and am full of gladness for the gifts which you have brought me. When you get home, I shall give you a good cloud which will make you feel good. I give you a good spirit and give you all good things. I want you to come again in three months; some from each tribe. There will be a good deal of snow this year and some rain. In the fall there will be such a rain as I have never given you before. When your friends die, you must not cry; you must not hurt anybody or do harm to any one. You must not fight. Do right always. It will give you satisfaction in life. Do not tell the white people about this. Jesus is now upon earth. He appears like a cloud. The dead are all alive again. I do not know when they will be here; maybe this fall or in the spring. When the time comes, there will be no more sickness and every ​one will be young again. Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them, until you leave them. When the earth shakes at the coming of the new world, do not be afraid; it will not hurt you. I want you to dance every six weeks. Make a feast at the dance and have food that every one may eat, then bathe in the water. That is all. You will receive good words from me sometime. Do not tell lies."
Short Bull announced that he had been made the special representative of the Messiah among the Dakotas; that the Messiah himself would appear among them in two seasons; that is, about the autumn of 1891. He at once began to instruct the Indians in the dance, and was fertile in inventing new ceremonies. One of these was the use of the sweat house, in which the Indians were treated for purification. The excitement rapidly increased among the Sioux, and in a short time the majority of them gave up almost all their time to the dance and other religious ceremonies. It was several months, however, before the matter seriously attracted the attention of the white authorities. While the dancing was chiefly confined to Pine Ridge, there was some dancing at Rosebud and in Big Foot's and Hump's camps on the Cheyenne River, and in Sitting Bull's camp on Grand River.
To avoid interference from the officers, the ghost dancers, as they were called, assembled in a large camp in the fastnesses of the Bad Lands. The agent at Pine Ridge became greatly alarmed, for many of the Indians about the agency had become very insolent and defied his authority. He asked that soldiers be sent to his assistance. The government therefore sent detachments of soldiers to Pine Ridge and Rosebud, and set up a cordon of military camps along the railroad between the reservation and the Black Hills, and from the vicinity of Buffalo Gap down the Cheyenne River to Fort Sully.
The government officials were exceedingly suspicious of the conduct of Sitting Bull, who always had been of a mean disposition, and defiant of the government's authority. When information came that his people were dancing, it was the judgment of the officers that he should be arrested and removed from the reservation. Major McLaughlin, for many years agent of Sitting Bull, ​believed that he could control the Indians on his reservation without resorting to harsh measures, but toward the end of December, when he learned that Sitting Bull was preparing to leave the reservation without authority, he too believed that the time had come when the old medicine man should be arrested. Order is preserved upon the Indian reservations through a system of Indian police, and Major McLaughlin had detailed a large number of
Fort Sully
his policemen to watch Sitting Bull and report upon his conduct. To these policemen was given the task of arresting Sitting Bull and bringing him into the agency. In this they were to be assisted by Captain Fetchet and a company of soldiers from Fort Yates. The arrest was to be made at daybreak on Monday morning, December 15.
Sitting Bull's home was on Grand River, in northern South Dakota, where he lived in two substantial log cabins, a few rods apart. Forty-three policemen, under command of Lieutenant Bull Head, who was a very cool and reliable man, surrounded Sitting Bull's house. Ten ​men went into the larger house, where they found Sitting Bull asleep on the floor. He was awakened and told that he was a prisoner and must go to the agency. He said,
Sitting Bull
"All right, I will dress and go with you." He sent his wives out to the other house to fetch some clothing and to saddle his favorite horse. While dressing, he began abusing the police for disturbing him in his rest.
While this was going on, about one hundred and fifty ​of Sitting Bull's followers gathered about the house, entirely surrounding the police and crowding them up against the wall. When the police brought Sitting Bull out of the house, where he could see the friends that had rallied to his assistance, he became greatly excited and refused to go on, and called on his friends to rescue him. Lieutenant Bull Head and Lieutenant Shave Head were standing on either side of him, with Sergeant Red Tomahawk guarding behind, while the rest of the police were trying to clear the way in front.
Catch the Bear, a friend of Sitting Bull's, fired and shot Bull Head in the side. Bull Head at once turned and sent a bullet into the body of Sitting Bull, who was also shot through the head at the same moment by Red Tomahawk. Shave Head was shot by another of the crowd and Catch the Bear was killed by A Lone Man, one of the police. Instantly there was a desperate hand-to-hand fight of less than forty-three men against more than a hundred.
The fight lasted only a few minutes. Six policemen were killed, including the officers Bull Head and Shave Head. The hostiles lost eight killed, including Sitting Bull and his son Crow Foot, seventeen years of age. The trained police soon drove their assailants into the timber near by, and then returned and carried their dead and wounded into the house, which they held for more than two hours, until the arrival of Captain Fetchet, with his troops, at seven o'clock. On the approach of the soldiers, Sitting Bull's warriors fled up Grand River a short distance, and then turned south across the prairie ​toward Cherry Creek and Cheyenne River. Major McLaughlin says: "The details of the battle show that the Indian police behaved nobly, and exhibited the best of knowledge and bravery. It is hardly possible to praise their conduct too highly."
Thus ended the life of Sitting Bull, the man who was most feared by the whites, and who probably had most influence in keeping the Indians in Hump a state of hostility. One other man, however, was also giving the government much anxiety. This was Hump, chief of the Minneconjou Sioux, a grandson of Black Buffalo, whom Lewis and Clark met at Fort Pierre. He lived near the mouth of Cherry Creek. The fear of Hump, however, was quite groundless, for upon being requested to do so, he at once came into Fort Sully and enlisted as a scout in the government service.
There was a band of Hump's people, under Big Foot, who were dancing on the Cheyenne, and the government determined to put this band under arrest. When the troops approached to arrest Big Foot and his people, the Indians were greatly alarmed, and though they agreed to accompany the soldiers to the fort, they escaped in the night time, and set off to join the dancers in the Bad Lands. Soldiers were at once sent in pursuit, and on the evening of December 28 Big Foot's band was ​overtaken on Wounded Knee Creek, about sixteen miles from Pine Ridge agency, where they were encamped, awaiting the return of scouts they had sent out to locate the camp of the ghost dancers. Big Foot himself was lying in his tepee, sick with pneumonia. Colonel Forsyth was in command of the soldiers, and he had with him four hundred and seventy men against one hundred and six warriors present in Big Foot's band. The night was passed comfortably, and the next morning the Indians were to be taken in to Pine Ridge agency.
Before starting it was deemed wise to disarm them, though they were miserably armed with old rifles of very little value. When this action was undertaken, the Indians became very much excited. Yellow Bird, a medicine man, harangued the Indians and urged them to resist, telling them that the soldiers had become weak and powerless and that the bullets would not injure Indians dressed as they were in the ghost shirts. As Yellow Bird spoke in the Sioux language the officers did not at once realize the dangerous drift of his talk.
One of the searchers began to examine the blankets of the Indians to see if they had arms concealed under them, whereupon Black Fox drew a rifle from under his blanket and fired at the soldiers, who instantly replied with a volley directly into the crowd of warriors, so close that their guns were almost touching. Nearly half of the warriors were killed with this first volley. The survivors sprang to their feet, throwing their blankets from their shoulders as they rose, and for a few minutes there was a terrible hand-to-hand struggle, in which every man fought to kill.
​Back where they commanded the Indian camp, a battery of Hotchkiss guns had been planted, and at the first volley these guns opened fire and sent a storm of shells and bullets among the women and children who had gathered in front of the tepees. The guns poured in two-pound explosive shells at the rate of nearly fifty a minute, mowing down everything alive. In a few minutes two hundred Indian men and women and children, with sixty soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground. The tepees had been torn down by the shells and some of them were burning above the helpless wounded, and the surviving handful of Indians were flying in wild panic, pursued by hundreds of maddened soldiers. The pursuit was simply a massacre, in which fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. The bodies of the women and children were scattered along a distance of two or three miles from the scene of the encounter. The butchery was the work of new and untrained recruits, who were infuriated by the shooting down of their comrades without warning.
Thus was fought the engagement known as the battle of Wounded Knee. The next day the Indians attacked some soldiers midway between Wounded Knee and the agency, but were repulsed.
These engagements comprised all the actual fighting of the war. Within a day or two, General Miles came out and took charge of affairs, and, establishing communication with the Indian leaders, soon brought about an ​understanding which ended the trouble. It is known now that no hostilities were intended by the Indians in the first instance, nor would there have been any had the Indians' not been goaded on by the bad conduct of the officers.