David Vs Goliath Analysis

In most cases, Americans love a true underdog story. Movies that have a David vs Goliath-like plot, that culminates in a major battle that results in David overcoming all odds and concurring the Goliath-like antagonist. But the reality for most of history is that of tragedy and no heroic ending. This is the case the Lakota of the Pine Ridge Indian Agency fell victim to in the winter of 1890 when approximately 500 soldiers came to stop a ceremony later called the Ghost Dance. The horrifying ending to the once proud nation was a culmination of losing the Black Hills and amount of land allotted for reservation use, the expulsion of the Ghost Dance, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

You cannot begin to describe the what happened that …show more content…
In doing so, the caused many of the inhabitants of these reservations to look to old ways for strength. In 1890 a religious leader of the Paiute Nation named Wovoka brought to many reservations a dance that would be known as the Ghost Dance. Brown illustrates what Ghost Dance meant for the plains Indians, he explains, “ In the springtime, when the grass was knee high, the Earth would be covered with new soil which would bury all the white men, and the new land would be covered and Sweetgrass and running water and trees. Great herds of Buffalo and wild horses would come back. The Indians who danced The Ghost Dance would be taken up into the air and suspended there while a wave of new earth was passing and then they would be set down among the ghost of their ancestors on the new Earth was passing, and then they would be set down among the ghosts of their ancestors on the new earth, where only Indians would live.” (Brown 398) What this meant to the reservation Indians was that by dancing this ceremonial dance, the nightmare in which they were living would be swept away and they would return to the ways that were live by earlier generations. This dance represented the hope that the reservation Indians longed for. With the old way of life was all …show more content…
By 1890 many of the older generation of First Nation Americans gave up the hope that returning to the old ways would ever come back. On December 29th, 1890 the 7th Cavalry came to stop the supposed uprising, they gathered all the guns and knives from the camp of Lakota Natives. When Whitside was not satisfied with what he found, he began to go to the lodges of the participants to search for more weapons. According to Ushistory.org, an article explaining the particles of the incident states,“The army demanded the surrender of all Sioux weapons. Amid the tension, a shot rang out, possibly from a deaf brave who misunderstood his chief's orders to surrender.”(Ushistory.org, pa 7) What ensued is known to history as one of the most brutal massacres of the era. Many soldiers shot children and women in hiding, and chased down the rest of the nonfighting men and gunned them down. As the cavalry chased down the ones who had fled, the artillery units opened up with two Hotchkiss mounted guns, aimed at the encampment. A man by the name of Black Elk who would later give his account at The Battle of The Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee in the book authored by John Gneisenau Neihardt, gives a description of what happened when the soldiers opened fire. He breaks down the event after the first shot as such, “Then suddenly nobody knew what was happening, except that the soldiers were