The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee and their Historical Development
...to make a revolt. The Sioux are shown to be a people who are deserving of reparations from treaties ignored by the United States. Mooney focused on the fact that the Sioux were not intending for a conflict: Big Foot who had excelled in previous diplomatic engagements was present, and they had moved onto the agency’s land peacefully. Neither side intended for violence on the morning of December 29 1890, but the United States was the better armed. Mooney does not dissolve the Sioux of having a hand in perpetuating the massacre. Yellow Bird’s encouragement to resist the handing over of firearms and the fact that it was a Sioux rifle that was fired are points Mooney shows to illustrate some degree of Sioux inciting slaughter. While Mooney validates United States retaliation, he does not endorse the shooting of women and children. To quote, “…the wholesale slaughter of women and children was unnecessary and inexcusable.” Moon of Popping Trees of Rex Alan Smith grows off of the facts laid out by the work of Mooney. Where Mooney was a raw anthropologist collecting facts, Smith developed a view of complex cultural conflict. Smith begins with a synopsis of the events that occurred at Wounded Knee, transitions into the roots of the event and comes full circle with a detailed focus on the events of Wounded Knee. In words well chosen, however emphasizing the perceived primitive status of native cultures, Smith explains the inevitability of the Wounded Knee massacre, “That it would occur somewhere was almost predestined. It was the result of one of those inevitable tides of history that dictate change”. Smith continues on to say, “It ended with the final confrontation of two cultures separated by thousands of years of development and so different that mutual understanding was improbable and coexistence impossible.” Smith explores a unique issue that he considers a driving force for the inevitable conflict occurring when and where it did. That issue is the role of the media. Papers called for the blood of Indian conspirators and portrayed the army men that hovered around them as heroes and men of character. After receiving the violence which they craved and encouraged the news found safety in the opposite view, that of the victimized Indian. This politically charged and significant moment brought up by Smith is a new development that Mooney had not brought into focus, a prime example of the evolving nature of the study of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee. Deeper interpretations of the events are explored in Smith’s statement that, “the subjugation of the American Indians was complete and the Indian wars were ended”. The development of Mooney’s facts into a historical perspective gained with time and observed as to how they played out in their entirety is the gift that Smith provides to the continuing historical endeavor of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee. An issue given prominence by Smith that Mooney may not have neglected entirely, but did not grant as much significance to would be the riff that formed between General Miles and Colonel Forsyth over the blame of the Wounded Knee incident. In a move that shows Miles’ awareness as to the gravity of the horror committed at Wounded Knee, Colonel Forsyth was removed from his command for, “having permitted the massacre of non-combatants”. The immediate disgust and shock as to the result of this military action is shown for our observation. Smith’s highest moment in his processing of the facts available to him comes through in his words on the nature of the Massacre, “This may be why we have generally come to know and accept the story of Wounded Knee more in terms of the accusations than of the evidence, and have come to understand it as a simple confrontation between Good and Evil rather than as the complex tragedy of errors that evidence indicates”. Smith calls for people to move away from pointing fingers towards learning from this situation in order to fix current injustices in the paragraph immediately following that quote. This state of forward thinking and application to current social injustice is an example of the evolving historical analysis of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee by Rex Alan Smith. Shifting the focus on the history of what happened to the equally significant of question of “why” is Russell Thornton. In Thornton’s We Shall Live Again the argument that the Ghost Dance was “deliberate and rational” on the part of those who chose to involve themselves. Instead of portraying the Ghost Dance as the failure of a dream, it is portrayed as a legitimate attempt at cultural preservation. Thornton’s analysis focuses on different populations of natives and how they involved themselves in different ways with the Ghost Dance. In areas of heavy population loss there you would find a tribe that found solace in the Ghost Dance. Variables to whom and how they would react to the Ghost Dance were: size of the tribe previous to contact with colonialism and then hearing word of the Ghost Dance. Also important was their size before colonialism and their size when they heard the Ghost Dance message. Those tribes that had experienced the heaviest and most recent losses were the Ghost Dance followers. Also, those smaller tribes who immediately felt the pains of loss were all the quicker to follow the movement. The failure of the Ghost Dance led to two main courses of action according to Thornton. Some lost interest entirely in the movement, disheartened and disillusioned by the failing of their dream. In other cases some turned the Ghost Dance into a project of religion. Those that maintained and evolved the Ghost Dance from a vision to a religion are the perpetuators of revitalization. It is in the cohesion of these communities that the dead were seen to return. Not actually bringing the dead to life, but the rekindling of the culture that had been pushed out of these Indians is where the Ghost Dance prospered best according to Thornton. Militant, larger tribes accepted the Ghost Dance in different ways than the smaller tribes. Immediately pertaining to Wounded Knee are the militant Sioux. The Sioux took an entirely nonviolent movement and added warrior elements to it. But with smaller tribes they grasped firmer to the conce...