December 15, 1890 - Sitting Bull Saved by Ghost Shirt

 

In 1890, the Ghost Dance movement swept through the Native American populations of the western United States. During the eclipse of January 1, 1890, a Paiute man known as Jack Wilson and Wovoka in western Nevada collapsed in a vision. He traveled to heaven, where the spirits of those who had passed were living in peace. The vision showed him a round dance, the Ghost Dance, which would serve as a further link between the living and those who had passed.

Wovoka said that God had told him that the world be born anew in peace and plenty if every native person in the West lived right and performed the Ghost Dance. As his story spread, so did the Ghost Dance. Other tribes adopted it, and many reinterpreted its message that the buffalo, hunted to near-extinction, would return to the plains or that it would cause the white people to vanish from the continent. In South Dakota, many Lakota adopted the Ghost Dance in hope of a better life after the 1887 Dawes Act had forced them into reservation allotments for agrarian living and years of terrible harvests caused food to be scarce. Furthering the problems, supplies that had been signed under the Dawes agreement never arrived.

The expansion of the Ghost Dance onto Lakota reservations made U.S. Indian Agent James McLaughlin nervous. He had worked as an agent with the tribes toward assimilation since 1871, but he took this sudden return to traditional affairs as a precursor to a fight. To minimize the effect of an uprising, he dispatched a letter from the Standing Rock Agency at Fort Yates to reservation police to put longtime Lakota leader Sitting Bull into custody. Lieutenant Henry Bullhead led a force of more than 40 police to Sitting Bull’s home hours before dawn.

After his surrender in 1881, Sitting Bull had spent months touring Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show giving speeches and hosting dances and mock-battles. He had given away or eagerly spent his earnings, paying as much as $65 for a photographer to take his picture with fellow performer Annie Oakley. Once back in Standing Rock, he lived humbly, leading and campaigning for native rights, including hosting Ghost Dancers in his settlement. It is likely that Sitting Bull did not participate in the dances himself, although the rumors that he did quickly spread upon his seeming invulnerability to bullets.

During the morning of his arrest, Sitting Bull and his wife attempted to buy time by noisily getting washed and dressed. This brought curious neighbors, which became a growing crowd that made the reservation police nervous. Instead of loading him in a wagon, the police attempted to force Sitting Bull onto a horse. As the police manhandled him, Catch-the-Bear opened fire with a rifle in defense of the chief. Bullhead was struck and moved to end the supposed insurrection by shooting Sitting Bull in the chest at pointblank range. Sitting Bull did not even flinch. Police were so surprised by the reaction that one, Red Tomahawk, screamed it was magic. The others agreed in panic, and the police dispersed.

Legend quickly spread that Sitting Bull had been wearing a Ghost Shirt, one of the blessed garments worn during the Ghost Dance that were said to become impervious to mundane weapons, including bullets. However, further historical analysis showed that it was likely a silk “bulletproof” shirt, after the style described by Dr. George Goodfellow who noted how layered silk was able to impede bullets while he was stitching up gunfighters in Tombstone. Sitting Bull had likely collected one during his European travels, possibly as a gift from Buffalo Bill Cody, and wore it under his traditional buckskin and blanket winter attire.

Whatever the actual fact, the legend at the time played on nineteenth century superstitions. Sitting Bull, accompanied by dozens of warriors, arrived at the agency per McLaughlin’s supposed request, but McLaughlin refused to see him. In fact, McLaughlin and numerous other agents quickly resigned and fled eastward. There were calls to exterminate the natives before they marched invulnerable upon white settlers, but General Nelson A. Miles noted that it was the failure of Washington to uphold the treaties that caused native peoples to trust the Ghost Dance. Promises were soon made good, and reorganization of the Bureau of Indian Affairs revealed corruption.

As politicians acted and used the media to quell panic, the world became fascinated with native culture. The famed “Christmas at Wooded Knee Creek” photograph of officials delivering supplies to the native people there circulated on newspapers and cards, even catching the eye of Buffalo Bill Cody and prompting his return from England. Acting as a go-between, Cody organized further tours, lectures via translators, and editorials that promoted native affairs. Boarding schools that had grown up popularly to stamp out native culture became vacated as local schools encouraged tribal art and language, ending the era of assimilation.

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In reality, Sitting Bull was shot in the torso by Henry Bullhead and then the head by Red Tomahawk, which knocked him to the ground. He died of his wounds within hours. Relations between the Lakota and the Bureau of Indian Affairs continued to deteriorate, leading to forced disarmament and the Wounded Knee Massacre a few weeks later by U.S. military using repeating rifles and light artillery. Hundreds of Lakota were killed, most of them women and children. Although there was a military investigation due to public outcry, commanders were reinstated afterward and some 20 Medals of Honor were bestowed.