Constantly pursued by the U.S. Army since leaving the reservation, time was running out for Chief Big Foot's band of Miniconjou Lakota Sioux. Big Foot and his group, numbering about 350 people (including women and children), left their Dakota reservation in December 1890. Now cold, hungry, and sick (Big Foot himself was suffering with pneumonia), the Cavalry intercepted the band and escorted it to Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Colonel James W. Forsyth commander of the 7th Cavalry, about 500 men, surrounded the Indian encampment. Neither side wanted a confrontation but the Indians resisted disarming and tensions began to build. When a rifle accidentally discharged a battle ensued. After a brief exchange of close-range fire and hand-to-hand fighting the Indians scattered and the artillery opened fire. The village was flattened and scores of Indians cut down. Nearly two-thirds of Big Foot's people, including Big Foot himself, were killed or wounded. While the troops lost twenty-five killed and thirty-nine wounded. This entire confrontation occurred over a visionary religion known as the Ghost Dance. It was this prescribed dance that had given many Indians hope for the future, but that hope ended tragically at Wounded Knee Creek.
The founder of the Ghost Dance was a Paiute mystic known as Wovoka or Jack Wilson. He was born in Western Nevada in 1856 and very little is known about his early life. It is suspected that his father was Tavibo, a Paiute religious leader who had prophesied that white settlers would one day be swallowed up by the earth while all dead Indians would emerge to enjoy a world free of conquerors. Tavibo had urged Indian tribes to dance in circles and sing religious songs to hasten the day in which his prophecy would occur. At age fourteen, Wovoka's father died and David Wilson, a white rancher, raised him. Wovoka took the name Jack Wilson and learned to speak English. In the late 1880s Wovoka contracted small pox and while in a state of delirium he claimed that a vision appeared to him. After this incident Wovoka prophesied that there would soon be a dawning of a new age for all Indians. White civilization would vanish and the Indians would live in a land of abundance and experience a spiritual renewal that promised eternal life. Wovoka urged Indian tribes to engage in a regime of ritual dancing and upright moral behavior. Despite the association of the Ghost Dance with the Wounded Knee massacre Wovoka emphasized to his followers not to harm anyone or to fight with anyone. Instead he urged Indians to always do right and not to refuse to work for whites.
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