The Final Surrender

With some 500 Army troopers preventing the escape of the Indians at Wounded Knee camp, Col. James Forsyth ordered the captives to surrender their weapons.  The Indians refused and the colonel grew impatient.  He ordered his men to search the tepees and the persons of the Indians themselves.  To lay hands on a warrior was both dangerous and insulting. 

Black Coyote, a young Sioux warrior, was therefore insulted by the Army's treatment and fired a wild shot during the ensuing scuffle.  The Army, of course, took that as a call for a murderous, close-range assault.  The Indians fired back and it became a blood bath from thereon.  From a low hill, four Hutchkiss guns took out the fleeing Indians - men, women and children until the snows turned red.

Twenty-five officers and troops were killed and 39 wounded.  The Indian count was 153-300, depending on whose estimate you believe.  Civilians were paid $2 per body to bury the bodies. One member of the burial party put it this way, "It was a thing to melt the heart of a man, if made of stone.  To see these little children with their bodies shot to pieces and thrown into the pit."

Those Indians at Pine Ridge Reservation, some 4,000 of them, gathered at White Clay Creek and surrounded the Army as it approached.  Eventually another cavalry came to their rescue.  General Miles surrounded the village and sent men to talk to the Sioux Chiefs.  He got them to surrender without further bloodshed on January 15, 1891, ending the war with the Native Americans.  It was not a proud era in America history...

Next time...Railroads change the Nation
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On March 26, 1872, An earthquake felt from Mexico to Oregon rocks the Owens Valley in California, killing 30 people. People hundreds of miles away in Tijuana, Mexico, felt the shaking. It is estimated that it had a magnitude of 7.8. One of most famous accounts of this earthquake came from explorer and scientist John Muir, the man who was instrumental in the establishment of Yosemite National Park.

Mistaken Assumptions

White fear and anger over the Ghost Dance focused on one Indian, Sitting Bull, Sioux chief and medicine man who had been the last to surrender to the Army and accept government authority.  It was actually Sitting Bull who was skeptical of the Ghost Dance, but he refused to intervene to stop it either.  Ironically the Indian agents believed that he had set off the Ghost Dance frenzy that they so feared, and wanted him arrested for it.

Major General Nelson Miles ordered his arrest in December 1890 along with that of Big Foot, a leader at the Cheyenne River Reservation.  On December 15th the Indian police seized Sitting Bull but a fight broke out.  In the fight six policemen, six Sioux, and Sitting Bull were killed.

After Sitting Bull's death, some 400 Sioux fled south to the Cheyenne River Reservation.  Most of them surrendered at Fort Bennett but the rest (about 38 in all) took refuge with Big Foot.  The Army kept close watch on Big Foot and because of the intense surveillance, he took his people, along with the remaining Sioux and fled to the Pine Ridge Reservation in the Dakota Badlands.

The Army pursued the fleeing Indians with several cavalry units and caught up with them within a few miles.  They arrested Big Foot and gave him a military escort upon his request to a place they camped 20 miles outside of Pine Ridge Reservation, called Wounded Knee.

Next time...a wild shot
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On March 22, 1765, hoping to raise sufficient funds to defend the vast new American territories won from the French in the Seven Years’ War, the British government passes the notorious Stamp Act.   The legislation levied a direct tax on all materials printed for commercial and legal use in the colonies, and helped plant seeds for a far larger movement against the British government and the eventual battle for independence.

A True Reformer

On September 7, 1877, the US Army surgeon Valentine T. McGillyCuddy worked long hours in a vain attempt to save the life of wounded Chief Crazy Horse.  By his actions he won the respect of the Sioux and the name "Holy Medicine Man."

The following year, McGillyCuddy, appalled by the treatment of the Indians, went to Washington and talked his way into the job of agent at Pine Ridge Reservation in the Dakota Territory.  Under McGillyCuddy, an able, honest administrator, the Sioux and Cheyenne at Pine Ridge were so prosperous that other Indians asked to come and join them.  McGillyCuddy organized an Indian police force that enforced the law impartially, arresting Indians as well as white men breaking the law.

The whites, of course, complained loudly at the indignity of being taken into custody by Indians.  Workers and freighters objected when McGillyCuddy insisted that Indians build their own houses and haul their own supplies from the railroad. 

McGillyCuddy also outraged corrupt Indian Bureau officials who seemed to feel they had a license to steal from the Indians.  He became the most investigated man in the country as the Indian Bureau tried to get rid of him.  Finally in 1886, he was removed for refusing to dismiss a valued assistant.

The one reformer who really did reform the life of the Indian, didn't do it the way the white man wanted.  That's the real shame of it all...

Next time...The Tiger in the Southwest
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On February 26, In a controversial move that inspires charges of eastern domination of the West, President Coolidge asked the Congress to establishes Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.