As news of this miracle spread, followers from all over the desert and eastward into the plains clamored for the charmed shirts, soon called "ghost shirts" because of their color. Wovoka supplied the shirts, at a good price, putting on each one for a moment to endow it with magic power. With each shirt he gave a solemn warning that it was not to be used for war, as all his followers should be peaceful, but this admonition was easily forgotten by many of the purchasers.
On the plains the new dance soon became known as the ghost dance, from its connection with the ghost shirts. And along with the dance, the songs, and the shirts went a message that promised deliverance for all red men in the near future. When the Indians had proved their sincerity by ritual dancing and improved behavior, the Great Spirit would destroy the white man and his works by a great flood. Then the earth would be renewed, as it had been long ago, with all the buffalo and other game restored. Indians who had died and gone to the spirit world would return, for this was to be a new heaven where there would be no death.
On the plains the dancers wore two feathers in their hair, by which they would be lifted up into the new world. Instead of a flood, they expected a new earth to come out of the west, dropping down and blotting out the old. All the good Indians would be lifted up by their feathers, while all the whites would be buried. In every variation of this regeneration theme, the whites were to be destroyed by the Great Spirit and the Indians would not need to fight.
All through the summer of 1890 many thousands throughout the plains joined in the ghost dance, the mass frenzy providing a dramatic release of their pent-up frustrations. All this furor among their charges went unnoticed or was ignored by the Indian agents on the many reservations until one among the Sioux at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, more alert than the rest, took notice of the meetings and banned the ghost dance among the 6,000 Sioux under his care, but the dancing still went on out in the Badlands, far from the agency.
That summer the Sioux were more restless than usual, closely confined to their reservations, their ranks reduced by wars and disease, their buffalo gone. Government rations of beef, their basic food supply, had been cut in half by Congress, and a new cut was rumored. The Sioux were in the mood to listen to any teachings that might lead to a better future. When they heard of the red messiah in the Nevada desert, they sent reputable men to investigate. These all returned true believers, deeply committed to the new religion. In a short time some of the Sioux medicine men were falling into trances and receiving visions.
In the midst of the growing excitement, the Indian commissioner announced a further cut in the beef rations just as a severe drought was destroying the few crops planted by the more progressive Sioux. At the same time, the experienced Indian agents and agency employees were replaced by inexperienced men, but politically more acceptable to the new administration in Washington. One of the poorest of the new men was given the critical post at Pine Ridge, with its 6,000 restive Sioux. By his timidity and poor judgment he invited disorder, then made matters worse by calling for soldiers to help him keep his unruly wards in line. This was in mid-October 1890.
By this time accounts of the ghost dance and the general unrest had reached Washington, disturbing both the army officials and the Indian Bureau. They moved quickly to prevent the possibility of another Little Bighorn debacle by sending in General Nelson A. Miles with 3,000 troops. Then the high officials sent out an order to seize the old medicine man Sitting Bull and lock him up. When Sitting Bull resisted, he and several of his men were shot down.
Other Sioux bands camped near the agency heard rumors that this attack was the first step in a plan to wipe out all the Sioux. They scattered like frightened quail, seeking shelter in the Badlands. General Miles did his best to calm their fears and soon induced most of them to return to the neighborhood of the agency, where they could be fed and supervised. A few of the bands were very slow in returning, stopping now and again to talk things over. Troops were sent out to escort and speed up the laggards.
One band returning under escort camped for the night on Wounded Knee Creek, setting up their tipis in the dry creek bottom. In the morning they discovered that many other troops had joined their escort during the night and that the camp was entirely surrounded. Next, all the men and older boys were ordered from the tipis and made to sit on the open ground wrapped in their blankets; the frightened women and children remained huddled in the tipis. The morning was cold and gloomy, December 29, 1890.
Troops then began searching the tipis for hidden guns, pushing the women about, tearing open the packs and scattering everything on the ground. As the women began wailing, a medicine man sprang to his feet and began the ghost dance among the seated men, blowing on a war whistle of eagle bone. When an officer ordered a soldier to stop the dancer, a young Sioux pulled out a revolver and shot the officer. At the sound of the shot, the troops all started firing into the crowd.
For a few minutes a hail of fire from the army rifles swept the camp ground, tearing the sitting men to piece, piercing the tipis, and whistling across the circle to strike some of the troops on the other side.
Then it was all over, and as the Indian men, women, and children died on Wounded Knee that morning, the whole ghost-dance movement died with them, for about half the dead men wore the magic ghost shirts, torn to tatters by the bullets.
The flame of hope that had burned so brightly in the early autumn flickered out at Wounded Knee. The buffalo would never return.
25. Crossbreeding Buffalo and Cattle
The many attempts of the early Spanish colonists to raise buffalo along the Rio Grande in New Mexico were unsuccessful, They were able to capture the calves in the buffalo country, some 200 miles to the east, in the late spring, and could raise them using cows or goats as foster mothers, but they could not control them after the first year or so. The young buffalo became unruly and dangerous during their third year and could be kept only in strongly fenced enclosures, which the Spanish could not afford in that treeless country. Although the old records do not give the details, it is probable that all the buffalo had to be killed by the time they were three years old. It is also probable that the tradition of a few buffalo being seen along the Rio Grande in the seventeenth century traces back to these captives.
Quite a large number of people have tried to raise and tame buffalo over the years, but all records since 1800 indicate that every attempt to domesticate the animal has failed. The handlers mention that the calves are friendly and easy to handle when caught young, not more than a month old, but that they become bad-tempered and unruly later, the bulls as two-year-olds, the cows sometimes not until they are three. Then they attack their handlers without any warning. Several people have been killed in this way. Ernest Thompson Seton, who hunted and studied big game for many years, rated the buffalo as the wild animal most dangerous to man. He included these captives in his reckoning, for he considered them truly wild even though they had been raised in captivity.
Many of the people who engaged in attempts to domesticate the buffalo were interested in crossing them with domestic cattle, hoping to secure a good beef animal more docile than buffalo and hardier than cattle. Since 1890 it has been the custom to call all such crosses cattalo, a name given them by Colonel Charles Jesse ''Buffalo" Jones when he produced his first hybrids in Kansas.