Campfire Stories of Indian Qiaracter 511 



men that they must worship him by the Ghost dance. This 

 is his own simple setting forth of the doctrine: 



When the Sun died I went up into Heaven and saw God and 

 all the people who had died a long time ago. God told me to 

 come back and tell my people they must be good and love 

 one another and not to fight or steal or lie. He gave me this 

 dance to give to my people. — (Ethn. Ann. 14. p. 764.) 



At Pine Ridge, S. D., in the winter of 1890, the Sioux 

 were learning this dance with its songs and its Christ-like 

 creed. It meant the end of war. War had been their 

 traditional noblest pursuit. But now at the bidding of the 

 new prophet they agreed to abjure it forever; and they pre- 

 pared to take up the new religion of love. 



The Indian agent, Hke most of his kind, was ignorant 

 and utterly unfitted for his position. He said it was some 

 new sort of a war dance. The troops were sent for and the 

 Indian populace was gathered together at a place called 

 Wounded Knee near Pine Ridge (Dec. 29, 1890). They 

 had submitted and turned in their rifles. Then, maddened 

 by the personal indignities offered them in searching for 

 more arms, a young Indian who stiU had a gun fired at the 

 soldiers. It is not stated that he hit any one, but the 

 answer was a volley that killed half the men. A minute 

 later a battery of four Hotchkiss machine guns, was turned 

 on the defenceless mass of virtual prisoners; 120 men, and 

 250 helpless women and children were massacred in broad 

 daylight, mown down, and left on the plain, while the white 

 soldiers pursued the remnant and the cripples, to do them 

 to death in the hills. 



Almost all the dead warriors were found lying near where the 

 "fight" began, about Bigfoot's teepee, but the bodies of the 

 women and children were foimd scattered along for two miles 



