The year 1890 witnessed one of the most serious outbreaks of the red men of the Dakota reservations. The Ghost Dance was indulged in, and the feeling of dread and fear spread all over the Western country. This dance was instigated by Sitting Bull, who had returned to the reservation eleven years previous. It has always been a superstition among all the Indians that the Messiah would come to them some day, bring all their dead to life, and drive the whites out of the land. Sitting Bull encouraged the Sioux in Dakota to believe this. At once the War Department was given full control of the Indians by the Interior Department. At the different agencies it was found that the Indians were stealing cattle and horses and running them off into the Bad Lands, where they designed starting a camp. It was well known that if Sitting Bull reached that stronghold he would be safe, so the Indian police at the Pine Ridge Agency were told to arrest him, which they did, and started back to the Agency, knowing a body of cavalry and infantry were following in their wake to assist them. But Sitting Bull's friends rushed to his assistance and a fierce hand-to-hand encounter took place. They all fought like fiends, and lost several of their numbers. But the police held the old chief captive, {349}and two of them shot him--Bullhead and Red Tomahawk. A son of the chief, Crow Foot, was slain also. BATTLE OF WOUNDED KNEE CREEK, |In the annals of American history there cannot be found a battle so fierce, bloody and decisive as the fight at Wounded Knee Creek between the Seventh Cavalry and Big Foots band of Sioux. It was a stand-up fight of the most desperate kind, in which nearly the entire band was annihilated, and although the soldiers outnumbered their opponents nearly three to one, the victory was won by two troops, about one hundred strong. [Illustration: 8359] The night before the Indians had agreed to submit, and the troops were up bright and early in readiness to move by eight o'clock. At that hour the cavalry and dismounted troops were gathered about the Indian village, the Hotchkiss guns overlooking the camp not fifty yards away. The Indians were ordered to come forward, away from their tents, and when the band, under the leadership of Big Foot, walked out of their lodges and formed a semicircle in front of the soldiers' tents, there was nothing to indicate that they would not submit. Colonel Forsyth, an Indian fighter of tried worth, never gave a thought to the chance of a fight. When it was made plain to the band that their arms must be {350}given up, the murmur of discontent was unanimous. [Illustration: 9360]