THE KILLING SPIRIT: Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee (122)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GHOST DANCE AT WOUNDED KNEE



The march to Wounded Knee became a procession many miles long, winding its way like a mythical serpent down a road that ran parallel to Wounded Knee Creek, where the survivors of the 1890 massacre sought refuge from a torrent of destruction, where Lakota mothers wrapped their bodies around infants and children as the blue coats searched the creek bed with bayonets.

Jerico remembered as if it was happening before his tear stained eyes. The booming cannons of the Hotchkiss guns pounded his skull, the men scrambling for weapons, weapons they had only just discarded as proof of their peaceful intent, the women crying and scrambling for cover, and the children trampled in pools of fresh blood. Seven times he would stop and fall to the earth, as Yellow Bird and Black Coyote fell, as Kicking Bird and Short Bull fell, as Whirlwind Hawk and Big Foot fell, as grandfather offered prayers to the fallen ancestors.

The image of Jerico in prayer, his multitude of followers with bowed heads, was printed in papers across the land. The national media dispatched their crews and swarms of people converged on Pine Ridge, Rosebud and Wounded Knee. It was the march on Mobile; it was Woodstock; it was the storming of the Bastille. It was the great emancipation and the rebirth of Tecumseh’s march through the south.

It was everything to everyone, serving every purpose, religion and ideology. Mormons, mystics, born-again evangelicals, revolutionaries, Wiccans, political activists, misfits and zealots of every description dropped their daily lives for an illusive dream of redemption, forgiveness, enlightenment, justice or fame. They came from all directions, converging on a state ill equipped to receive them.

The state police were committed to peaceful cooperation but the sense of alarm was growing. They had never seen a gathering of this size and they had never felt besieged by the media spotlight as they were now.

Jerico’s followers had done nothing to arouse concerns but when a group of white supremacists arrived from northern Idaho, taunting the marchers at the end of the procession, their racist slurs soon gave way to stones and clubs. The marchers linked arms, stood their ground, refusing to strike back. Several fell and were pulled back to their feet while others took their places. Several more were bloodied and beaten before troopers formed a barricade and drove the drooling, skinhead attackers back.

Had the warriors of AIM been at hand, there would have been a battle but the warriors were at the front of the march with Jerico and knew nothing of what was happening at the rear.
South Dakota’s newly elected governor Bart Johansen, a man with latent ties to the Aryan nation, began to perceive the march as a test of his political strength. He was frustrated by the police policy of tolerance, leaking stories to the press about hidden payoffs. He began to paint the march as an Indian uprising led by the radical militants of AIM.

When word came down about the supremacist confrontation, he twisted the facts in a television interview and soon declared a state of emergency, ordering roadblocks on the highways and interstate, and summoned the National Guard.

By the time Jerico reached the outskirts of Wounded Knee, he was greeted by a small army of guards and soldiers, reminiscent of the blue coats that confronted Big Foot over a century before. It was midday, the sun bright, the sky marked with floating white clouds, yet there was a darkness among them and the dreamers sensed the presence of the killing spirit.

Jerico was struck by the bitter root of apprehension, if not fear. More than ever, he was sworn to fulfill his vision, to lead a Ghost Dance at the memorial monument of Wounded Knee, but he could not stop his heart from feeling. He could not stop his mind from wondering: Is it worth the cost?

Sensing his doubt, grandfather counseled him to be strong for the vision was clear and the path could not be altered. He began singing a lament to the followers of Wavoka, to Big Foot and his band of free Lakota, to the victims who lay buried on sacred ground. The song was passed in waves to those who followed until all were singing, until the earth herself lamented, and the sound reverberated in open spaces and drums joined in the rhythm of sorrow.

The guards opened a path and Jerico marched to the memorial of his ancestors. He gave an offering to the four directions, to the heavens and to the sacred earth, before he knelt and allowed his tears to flow like a mighty river.

When finally he stood, his anguished heart was tinged with rage.

“I am a pilgrim,” he cried, “and my place of pilgrimage is Wounded Knee!”

The waves of song were suddenly replaced by waves of silence. Even the animals of the open range, disturbed from their daily activities, grew still. For a thousand miles, people stopped and listened, wondering at the sudden stillness in the air.

“My journey has taken me from the home of the White Buffalo to the blood-stained path of the Conquistador, from the Trail of Tears to the last march of Tecumseh, from the grave of Geronimo to the sacred Chiricahua Mountains of my Apache brothers, from the massacre of Sand Creek to the massacre of Sangre de Cristo, from the sacrilege of the Great White Fathers carved in sacred stone to Crazy Horse Mountain, where I fell down to my knees and gave thanks:

“My lands are where my people lie buried.”

From the high ground of the burial site, he looked out upon a sea of humanity. The men held their sorrow within, jaws firm, chests forward, but the women broke down in tears, unafraid of their emotions.

“I gave thanks to the mother, the father and the Great Spirit. I gave thanks to the spirit of Crazy Horse as he rises from the earth to reclaim Lakota heritage, to reclaim the land itself.

“Wo! Lakota! How can I explain the sorrow of Wounded Knee? My heart has been pierced by a thousand poisoned arrows. My spirit is broken and my soul is in flames. The sorrow runs through me like a mother’s pain and my tears flow like rivers, but it is not for the right reason.

“Here lies Big Foot in his dance of death. Here lie the Ghost Dancers, the followers of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the keepers of the faith, the holders of the sacred flame! Here, on this sacred hill, I should have no thoughts but this: The Ghost Dance survives!

“Instead, the thought that will not leave me in peace is this: It should not be this way!”

He raised his hand to the west and a multitude of heads turned.

“Here, on memorial hill, at the head of the table where the father should be, there is a place of worship bearing the sign: Sacred Heart Church. Wo Lakota! So the Church of Rome, the church of the Black Robes, has laid claim to this most sacred of sacred grounds!

“It should not be this way!

“I understand that many Lakota have pledged to the Church of Rome. I understand that the Church has helped the poor and the sick but this is Wounded Knee! It is not right! It should not be this way!

“These are the Black Robes! These are the same Black Robes that brought plague to all Indian peoples! These are the vampires of faith! They do not belong here! Anywhere but here!

“NOT AT WOUNDED KNEE!”

As he looked to the people, he heard their rumbling. He saw the anger rising in the hearts of the AIM warriors and spreading to the followers.

“No, my brothers and sisters, do not act on this rage. There must be no acts of violence or destruction. It would only give them reason to re-enact the massacre on these grounds, grounds already rich with Lakota blood. It is not the way.

“Instead, let us bury this stain, this sacrilege, in silence and neglect. From this day forward, let no man or woman Lakota born step within those walls again.”

Some cried out against the decree but they were quickly silenced by the burning eyes surrounding them. There would come a time for dissent but it was not here and now.

He began his song, a Ghost Dance lament, linking arms with the dreamers, forming a circle of forty-two men and women, dancing in a clockwise direction around the memorial monument. Drums beat a steady rhythm as another circle, four times that number, linked arms and danced around the inner circle with lines of drummers and singers in between. Then another larger circle formed and another and another until thousands were dancing in the sacred manner of the Ghost Dance, shuffling from side to side, arms linked and swaying, voices emerging that had no words, some falling and pounding the earth as if taken by the spirits of the ancestors.

Before the amazed eyes of the guardsmen, troopers, soldiers and onlookers outside the circles of dancers, a cloud took the shape of a white buffalo and from that cloud the spirits of dancers emerged, forming circle after circle in the sky above, until the dancers upon the earth were connected to the stars and the moon and the heavens, until it seemed there was not enough room in the universe to contain them, until it seemed that the universe itself would burst at the seams.

It was a vision so clear the whole of the earth stood dumb and hollow by comparison. It was as if the vision became reality and the reality we cling to became a wisp of illusion.

In his mind’s eye, as he danced and lamented, Jerico saw the dancers surrounded by soldiers with bayonets fixed. He saw the Hotchkiss cannons poised to open fire. He wanted to cry out but he had no voice. He saw the blue coats unleash their deadly crossfire but the dancers did not fall. He saw the clouds open and lightning strike the soldiers down. He saw the earth crack open and the blue coats swallowed like ants beneath a broken dam.

He saw two great war chiefs, one in full war bonnet on a large brown bay, the other with a single feather on a white Appaloosa, bearing the mark of thunder. He saw the sacred pipe of the Lakota passed from Sitting Bull to Crazy Horse to Jerico on the earth below.

He fell to his knees and wept until he had no more tears.

As he rose in the breadth of time, the sky darkened, the circles of dancers collapsed in exhaustion, and the vision slowly receded. In the distance, the cry of a thunderbird and silence. The sun returned and the dancers breathed a sigh of relief. They had accomplished a great deed, a deed that would live in the hearts of the people for all generations to come.

The air was still and the mood was elation, yet there was a tinge of uncertainty. They had touched the other world, the world of ancestral spirits, yet they had opened a window to darker spirits as well.

The soldiers and guards pointed their weapons down and bowed their heads in respect for the dead and the living tribute to their sorrow. Those who died at Wounded Knee so many moons ago survived in the hearts and minds of those who still walked these hallowed grounds and remembered. The loss the Lakota suffered here by the bullet of the white man was ultimately won by the spirit of a people that would not be vanquished, bought or corrupted, that survived a century of genocide and the relentless onslaught of the wasichu with his black robes, his armies, his barbed wire, his iron horse, and his guns that rained bullets. The Lakota survived.

Eyes burning, blanketed in sweat and tears, Jerico witnessed the scene of his people’s glory transformed into one of unspeakable horror: charred bodies, scorched earth and a trail of firebirds in the eastern sky.

Grandfather raised his hands to the heavens and collapsed to the earth. Jerico rushed to his side, lifting his head, testing his breath and listening to the beat of his heart. He wanted to cry out for help but grandfather stopped him with the grip of his hand.

“I am dying,” he whispered. “There is no medicine that can heal me. It is my vision that speaks.”

Jerico understood though he would have fought a thousand warriors if it could change what the vision now demanded. It was grandfather’s vision as well. He had fulfilled six spokes of the great wheel, leaving only one: The keeping of a soul.

Deep in his heart, he had long known it would be grandfather.

“Take me home,” said grandfather.

“Take me to the Black Hills.”