Oh What a Slaughter (18 page)

As the fall of 1890 edged into winter on the northern plains, a general apprehension seemed to grow, both in Indians and whites. It is hard to say why. The Ghost Dance might have some kind of millennial implications, but it was just a dance held by some poor Indians—and Indians, like the whites themselves, had always danced. Despite these dances the Sioux were still a very subdued people. The two agents, McGillycuddy and McLaughlin, as well as General Miles, continued to insist that there was no cause for alarm, athough McLaughlin did allow as to how the dancing kept the Indians a little “stirred up,” the very condition the military authorities found to be the most frightening. More troops were readied, to put down this nonexistent revolt.

Though apprehensive about the troops, the Ghost Dancers kept dancing. The Sioux Short Bull went into the Badlands, where he intended, in private, to dance as much as he pleased. Quite a few tribesmen decided to go with him.

When feeling even slightly nervous about conditions at Standing Rock, agent McLaughlin had a tendency to put the blame on Sitting Bull. In the fall of 1890 the increased presence of soldiers was naturally nervous-making for the Indians. The Indians got the sense that they were going to be punished yet again, though no one knew why and no one wanted to be punished. More and more Sioux adopted Short Bull's tactic and drifted off to the Badlands or the hills.

It took almost no movement on the part of the Sioux to frighten the settlers.

Agent McGillycuddy, who, as a doctor at Fort Robinson, had treated Crazy Horse's wife, was not a man easily panicked. Apropos the Ghost Dance, he made the reasonable point that even the Seventh-day Adventists put on strange robes and performed strange rituals in
their
wait for the coming of the Messiah. Why shouldn't the Sioux be granted the same license?

Agent McGillycuddy's reasonable opinion did not prevail. The army was alarmed, and so a plan was made to arrest the usual suspect, Sitting Bull. General Miles reasoned that if a bunch of white soldiers rode in to arrest Sitting Bull there would very likely be a violent protest, perhaps even a revolt. Miles's first notion was to summon Buffalo Bill Cody, whose show was then in Chicago, in hopes that Cody could coax Sitting Bull to join him for a special performance of some kind. If Sitting Bull agreed, then he could be arrested somewhere off the reservation and sent to a military prison.

It doesn't seem likely that Cody had been informed about this plan; after all, he employed more than one hundred Indians in his show. If he had assisted in the arrest of their most renowned chief it is doubtful that the Wild West Indians would
have approved. They might even have revolted themselves, perhaps killing a few of the cowboys and stagecoach drivers that they routinely chased in the show.

Cody may have sensed, or found out, what the real plan was. On his own he made his way to Standing Rock; but then agent McGillycuddy objected to allowing Sitting Bull and Cody—in his view two slippery characters—to get together. Cody was told there could be no meeting, after all; in a huff the great showman went away without ever seeing his old star.

Sitting Bull had last talked to Crook in 1889. Since then he had been living quietly. McLaughlin knew that arresting him would be tricky: it would require great care. He thought it might be accomplished through the use of Indian policemen, of which by this time there were a goodly number. The young men of the Sioux may have regarded their policeman jobs as status symbols.

When the day of the arrest came no fewer than forty native policemen went to Standing Rock to arrest the old man. They were under the command of a Lieutenant Bullhead. As an extra precaution a detachment of cavalry went with them.

The native policemen arrived early, perhaps hoping to whisk the prisoner out before the camp was really awake. Sitting Bull himself was still asleep. Once awake, though grumpy, he finally agreed to go to the agency—it was not the first time he had been so summoned. The arresting officers were Lieutenant Bull-head and Sergeant Red Tomahawk.

Red Tomahawk

Bullhead

By the time Sitting Bull got dressed and stepped outside, a big crowd of Ghost Dancers had gathered. Seeing that he had crowd support, Sitting Bull suddenly balked. He appeared to change his mind. The old show horse that Buffalo Bill had given him was waiting, but Sitting Bull suddenly dug in his heels, forcing the policemen to push him toward his horse. Angered by this treatment of their leader, a Sioux named Catch-the-Bear whipped out a rifle
and shot Lieutenant Bullhead, who shot back, hitting Sitting Bull. Red Tomahawk also fired, hitting Sitting Bull in the head. Sitting Bull fell, dead. At this juncture fierce fighting broke out between the Ghost Dancers and the native policemen. The nearby cavalry, hearing sounds of battle, came rushing in and managed to save most of the native policemen, who otherwise would probably have been slaughtered to the last man.

The old show horse, some say, took the shooting as his cue and went through his repertoire of tricks while the battle raged.

Dee Brown and others have argued that it was only the power of belief in the Ghost Dance, with its promise of a Return, that kept a general revolt from flaring up. Some Sioux may have hesitated on that score, but, with Sitting Bull dead right before their eyes, many merely felt leaderless and fearful. Sioux by the hundreds soon fled the Standing Rock Reservation and made their way to the camp of the strongest surviving chief, in this case Red Cloud, who was at the Pine Ridge Agency.

Other frightened Sioux fled to the Badlands, where Short Bull still was. Others went to the mountains. Still others flocked to the other Ghost Dance sites.

Not many seemed to want to stay in the place where Sitting Bull had been killed, a place where worse might follow.

Perhaps as many as one hundred Standing Rock Sioux made their way to the camp of Big Foot, a well-respected Minniconjou chief.

Big Foot was then camped east of Pine Ridge, near Cherry Creek.

Two days after Sitting Bull's death, the army issued a warrant for the arrest of Big Foot himself. The old chief had done nothing hostile at all; he was merely on the arrest list, with many others, as a possible fomenter of trouble. In the eyes of the military he was an enemy combatant, much like the unfortunate Afghans who are being held in Cuba today.

What made this arrest order particularly inconvenient was that Big Foot was seriously ill. He had pneumonia, and was hardly able to stand, yet he was traveling in an open wagon, in wintertime. He was spitting blood; his shirt was stained with it.

On December 28 he saw some cavalry approaching and immediately ran up a white flag. The commanding officer of this troop, Major Samuel Whiteside, insisted that Big Foot and his band come with him to the large cavalry encampment on Wounded Knee Creek. The major wanted to disarm the Indians then and there, but a half-breed scout named John Shangneau persuaded him to wait until the Indians were safely in camp.

Once in the camp the Indians were carefully counted: 120 men and 230 women and children. Major Whiteside had by this time realized that Big Foot was seriously ill; he had a heated tent prepared for him and sent an army doctor to attend him.

Sometime after dark more soldiers arrived. Colonel James
Forsyth took over the command, with orders to take Big Foot and his followers to a military camp near Omaha, a goodly distance from Wounded Knee Creek.

By morning Big Foot was very sick indeed; he was barely able to breathe. His people, now entirely surrounded by soldiers, were naturally very fearful.

The next morning Colonel Forsyth ordered all the Sioux to assemble, so the process of disarming them could begin. Though not happy with his order, the Sioux began, rather tentatively, to comply.

(From this point on, it is only fair to say, there are many versions of what happened, all made by participants.)

The army, with its propensity for taking things too far, too fast, began to search the tents and the baggage in them, confiscating knives and hatchets as they went. Not many rifles were surrendered, and most of the ones handed over were defective in varying degrees. One of the few good rifles belonged to a Sioux named Black Coyote (or Fox), who brandished his gun above his head and informed the crowd that he had paid good money for it, an indication of his reluctance to part with it.

In the opinion of a witness named Dewey Brand, Black Coyote did intend to turn in his gun and was just having a little fun, but opinions as to Black Coyote's intentions are numerous. One Sioux thought Black Coyote to be a man of bad character. The soldiers were hustling Black Coyote away when his rifle evidently went off—perhaps an accident. Some think no one was hurt, others think an officer was either killed or wounded.

Whatever the truth of that, the well-primed soldiers—most of them members of the 7th Cavalry—began to fire indiscriminately into the mass of Indians. Big Foot, the sick chief, was killed by the first volley. The Sioux then began to fight with what little they had to fight with—knives, clubs, etc. Some of the soldiers who had been carrying out the disarming fell in hand-to-hand fighting.

Next, a Hotchkiss gun opened fire. This fire would seem to be as dangerous to the soldiers as to the Indians on the flats and, indeed, some of the soldiers were in danger from friendly fire. The marker at Wounded Knee says that 146 Indians were killed: the death toll for soldiers is usually thought to be between twenty-five and thirty-one. The Indians began to flee—many were cut down. A blizzard was on the way. When the firing finally stopped most of the wounded Indians were gathered up and taken to the Pine Ridge Agency, where they were housed in the mission.

James Mooney believes that when the sun rose that morning neither the soldiers nor the Indians were expecting trouble. This seems hard to believe. The Sioux were surrounded by soldiers. A machine gun was trained on the camp.

There were more than one hundred warriors with Big Foot. Mooney says a Ghost Dancer named Yellow Bird blew on an eagle-bone whistle and may have danced a few steps. In Mooney's account the Sioux at first relinquished only two rifles, prompting the provocative search of tents and baggage. Mooney thinks Yellow Bird may have told the Sioux that if they were wearing their Ghost Shirts the bullets would not find them. Mooney isn't sure what may have gone on between Yellow Bird and Black Coyote. No one is sure whether the latter fired accidentally or on purpose, or whether he wounded an officer or what.

Once the soldiers began to fire into the crowd, a frenzy developed that was not much different from the killing frenzies at the other massacres. Fear, nervousness, blind rage all contributed to a force that was soon unstoppable. The Sioux either fought or fled, and were hunted down in either case. Some got as far as two miles from the point of eruption before they fell. Mooney thinks Yellow Bird may have egged Black Coyote on, but did he? The
point, if there is one, is that in situations of high tension it takes only one vague, perhaps accidental, action to start a violent spasm of killing.

All the ingredients for catastrophe were there: the armed and jittery soldiers, a group of frightened, nervous, much harassed Indians. Perhaps Black Coyote meant to fire his gun, but then perhaps not. He was being shoved around—the shot
might
have been accidental.