ABSTRACT
On 29 December 1890 Sioux Chief Big Foot and about 350 of his fellow Sioux were encamped at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. During the previous weeks the messianic religion of the Ghost Dance had spread through the Indian communities in their reservations: the belief that performance of the Ghost Dance would bring about the end of white dominance and return the prairies to the Indians. To perform the dance, many wore brightly coloured 'ghost shirts' which they believed would stop bullets. As the senior officers talked with Big Foot, firing broke out from the US troopers, who fired volley after volley with ritles and Hotchkiss guns mounted on the surrounding ridge. Some 300 Indians were killed, and 25 US soldiers. The massacre at Wounded Knee put an end to the Ghost Dance movement and, effectively, to the Indian Wars.
