The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee

In the 1880s, an Indian named Wovoka claimed he had a revelation from the Great Spirit. If the Indians lived in a way that was good and if they did a certain dance, great changes would come about - the buffalo would again be plentiful, the Indian dead would live, and whites would be driven from the land.

As this message spread rapidly from tribe to tribe, white settlers panicked. They were frightened by the strange "Ghost Dance." The army moved to stop any Indian uprising.

In a terrible incident at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, over 200 Sioux, including women and children, were massacred by machine-gun fire.

Randee Falk: Spotlight on the USA; Oxford University Press, 1993, page 94