Summary

A Chapter by badincubus

The march of empire and conquest is not always a grand, glorious parade of military might; on occasion it condenses to the scale of man versus man. Major James McLaughlin, a seasoned Agent at the Standing Rock Reservation, would be the victor; it was just a matter of time until he grew weary of his opponent and finished him off, once and for all. They were an incongruent twosome, contending for the esteem of an estranged and subjugated people. Sitting Bull was scarcely tolerated at Standing Rock; his lexis painted fine lines on his back, his talent to influence his people, his faithfulness to the traditional ways all exposed a weakness in Major McLaughlin’s ability to productively govern savages. McGillycuddy had successfully ruined Red Cloud’s sway and brought the Pine Ridge savages into line, consequently focusing scrutiny on McLaughlin’s knotty affair with Sitting Bull.

The Ghost Dance quickly spread across the Plains and into the Reservations. It offered hope to a once powerful collection of tribes; now diminished and dependent upon the Wasichu for the necessities of life once provided for by the Grandfather. Like many of the tribes, terrible tragedy had befallen the Sioux people. Dislodged from ancestral homes, trapped between rival tribes and unappeasable European migrants many Sioux had given up the traditional ways. Hunger and sickness had been nonexistent until the streams of Wasichu flowed into their prairies. Now, corralled, starved, and wasted by disease the Sioux found faith in a fresh, sanguine ideology.

The connections between the songs and the religion of the Ghost Dance faction are deep-seated. The dogma rooted in the songs; along with the legends, mores, rituals, descriptions of archaic ways of life, and divinations compose the schema of the Native American state of mind during the evolution of Sioux and Arapaho cultural conditions (Mooney 953-957). These songs represent moments in time so earth-shattering that they were preserved and handed down through generations to be revealed to us, today (Mooney 953-957). This was not a common practice, as the songs were often created at moon-rise only to vanish before moon-fall (Mooney 953-957).

Austere, persevering, and emotive songs such as “Father Have Pity On Me” convey the privations and miseries of life on the reservations in the late 19^th century. “When I Met Him Approaching” evokes a sense of alarm a propos the endless host of settlers inundating Arapaho hunting grounds. The Sioux have a close bond with their ancestors and hold a potent desire to be near the burial place of their respective dynasties. “The Father Says So” is an augur of restoration for the connection with those abandoned intimates. “You shall see your grandfather " E’yayo’! The father says so,” declares - you shall see the land of your grandfather, I say so. Nostalgia for days gone by may be felt in the sentimental “Give Me My Knife”. While reading “The Whole World Is Coming”, do you perceive the inexorable force approaching and the acquiescence to the preordained?

Sitting Bull’s reflexive challenge to authority created too many causes for explanations from McLaughlin to his superiors at Fort Pierre. On June 18^th, 1890; McLaughlin writes a letter of account to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs expressing his desire to be rid of Sitting Bull and a few malcontents;

"So far as the Indians of this agency [Standing Rock] are concerned, there is nothing in either their words or their actions that would justify the rumor... There are a few malcontents here, as at all of the Sioux agencies, who cling tenaciously to the old Indian ways and are slow to accept the new order of things,… and this class of Indians are ever ready to circulate idle rumors and sow dissensions to discourage the more progressive,… and the removal from among them of a few individuals such as Sitting Bull, Circling Bear, Black Bird, and Circling Hawk, of this agency, Big Foot and his lieutenants of Cheyenne River agency, Crow Dog and Low Dog of Rosebud, and any of the like sort of Pine Ridge, would end all trouble and uneasiness in the future" (McLaughlin 197).

This letter precedes the arrival of the Ghost Dance at Standing Rock by two months. Kicking Bear does not arrive at Sitting Bull’s camp until August 1890 (McLaughlin 1). Major McLaughlin already had his sights set on Sitting Bull and his followers. He had Sitting Bull arrested, ultimately murdered, and instigated the Ghost Dance War to destroy the Sioux political structure not to contain a “pernicious system of religion” (McLaughlin 190). “Sitting Bull was the Chief; McLaughlin was determined to destroy his influence, to ‘break’ him, as McGillycuddy ‘broke’ Red Cloud at Pine Ridge” (Vestal 297).

The Ghost Dance was the pretext McLaughlin chose to serve his purpose. In his book, My Friend the Indian, he reveals his thoughts concerning the new religious movement;

“The doctrine was artfully framed to appeal to the cupidity of the Indian and to inflame him against the whites, carrying with it promise of return to the free life, with plenty of buffalo and no prospect of work. It upset none of the pagan ideas, and gave approval to the current belief in the existence of the ghosts. A more pernicious system of religion could not have been offered to a people who stood on the threshold of civilization, and who hungered for a realization of dreams that would free them from present poverty, probable hunger, and the prospect of toil” (McLaughlin 190).

Did McLaughlin judge the Ghost Dance system of belief to be inconsequential and unworthy of examination beyond the veneer, or was he attempting to rehabilitate his record by implying a lack of knowledge? Regardless, McLaughlin valued the Ghost Dance purely for its capacity to instigate fear and initiate the desired political cleansing. Alas, he judges no improvement could be made through consideration or examination of the intricacies of Sioux ethos.

McLaughlin misconstrued Sitting Bull’s title within the Sioux political circle; he presumed Sitting Bull ruled his people in the manner of European monarchs. The Sioux have an egalitarian social order and Sitting Bull was a counselor not a king. This misconstruction straight away baffled Charles Eastman as well, “A religious craze such as that of 1890-91 was a thing foreign to the Indian philosophy,” (Eastman 92). Many people close to scene of the Sioux Outbreak felt the “religious craze” would soon die out and that the presence of soldiers would fan the flames and lead to trouble (Riggs 125-127).

Just like so many religious movements this one began with a fever and ended with the death of a messiah. Sitting Bull and Major McLaughlin endeavored to use the Ghost Dance movement for their own disparate ambitions. Sitting Bull lost his life in contest for the favor of his people. The Ghost Dance prophecy was fulfilled; a savior was found and was once again executed by his own people.