Chapter 20 19. Wounded Knee Stream

The world is hopeless and it looks like God has forgotten us.Some said they saw the Son of God, others did not.If he comes, he will do big things like before.We doubt it, for we have seen neither him nor his work. The common people didn't know it, and they didn't care about it. They were just driven by hope, and they yelled at Him like madmen begging for mercy. They had heard what He promised, and they were buried in it. The white man was frightened to death, and brought in the soldiers, and we begged for life, and the white man thought we wanted theirs.We heard that the soldiers were coming, but we were not afraid. We hoped to tell them our plight and get their help.A white man said the soldiers were planning to kill us.We don't believe it, but some people were scared to death and fled to the defeated area.

Red Cloud Chief If it weren't for the support of the Ghost Dance Sect, as soon as Sitting Bull was assassinated, the sad and angry Sioux would have risen up to resist the guns of the soldiers.Their belief was so prevalent that the white man would disappear at once, and that dead relatives and friends would return the next year when the grass was green, so they took no vengeance.However, hundreds and hundreds of Hank Baba clansmen without a leader escaped from the Standing Rock Management Office, fled to a ghost dance camp, or fled to Pine Ridge to live with the last Red Cloud of the Great Chief.On the month of Deerhorn (December 17), about a hundred of these fleeing Hank Baba tribesmen arrived at the Minikonyo tribe camp of Chief Bigfoot in Cherry Creek.On the same day, the Ministry of War issued an order to arrest and imprison Bigfoot, who was also on the list of instigators and harassers.

As soon as Bigfoot knew that Sitting Bull had been killed, he immediately led his people to Pine Ridge, hoping that Hongyun could protect them from the attack of the soldiers.He caught pneumonia on the road, and when he coughed up blood, he had no choice but to be driven away in a cart.On December 28, as they approached Porcupine Creek, they spotted four companies of cavalry galloping towards them.Bigfoot immediately orders a white flag to be flown over his wagon.About two o'clock in the afternoon, he got up from his blanket to meet with Major Whitsey of the 7th U.S. Cavalry. While talking softly, blood dripped from his nostrils and froze in the severe cold.

Whitsey told Bigfoot that he had orders to take him to a cavalry camp at Wounded Knee.The Minikonyo chief replied that he was going in that direction, leading his people up Pine Ridge for safety. Whitsey turned around and gave orders to his second-rotor explorer Shang Ge Rui, and began to disarm the group of Bigfoot.Major, you have to look here, Shangri said: If you do this, I am afraid there will be a fight; if you do, you will kill all these women and children, but the men will escape from you . Whitsey insisted that his orders were to hunt down the Indians and disarm and disarm them. We'd better take them to the barracks, and take their horses and guns there.Shang Gray replied.

Well, Whitsey agreed: you tell Bigfoot to go to the barracks at Wounded Knee. The major took one look at the seriously ill chief and ordered the army ambulance to come forward.It is warmer in the ambulance cart, and the journey will be more comfortable than in the rickety caravan without springs.With the chief reloaded in the ambulance cart, Whitsey marched in single file to Wounded Knee.In the lead were two companies of cavalry, followed by ambulance carts and caravans, followed by a dense formation of Indians, and in the rear were two companies of cavalry, and two Hotchkiss machine-gun wagons. a company.

As the column squirmed across the last high ground on the ground and began to walk down the creek called Wounded Knee, Chongkebihebikebaila, dusk gradually fell.The midwinter gloom and the fine ice crystals dancing in the fading twilight add to the strangeness of the dark landscape.At one place in this frozen stream, the heart of Crazy Horse is buried in a secret place. The Indians of the Ghost Dance believe that the three souls and seven souls of Crazy Horse are waiting impatiently for that day. When the grass is green for the first time in spring, a new world will surely come. In the cavalry tent in Wounded Knee, the Indians stopped and counted the number of people. Even children, there were a total of 120 men and 230 women and children.As it was growing dark, Major Whitsey decided to wait until the next morning before disarming the prisoners.He assigned them camp at a place immediately south of the barracks, distributed them rations, and, owing to the scarcity of the Indians' drapes, sent them several military tents.Whitsey also ordered a stove to be placed in Chief Bigfoot's tent, and sent a regiment of medical officers to treat the chief.In order to ensure that these prisoners would not slip away, the major sent two companies of cavalry around the Sioux cones as guards, and also equipped two Hotkiss cannons on the top of a high ground overlooking the barracks.The barrel of this machine gun can fire explosive grenades three kilometers away, and their position can sweep the depth of the Indian cone area.

On that December night, after midnight, the remainder of the 7th Cavalry marched in from the east and camped quietly north of Major Whitsey's corps.Colonel Forsyth, who served as the commander of the regiment of the former Coster, is now in charge of the operations of the entire regiment.He informed Whitsey that he had been ordered to transfer Bigfoot's group to the Union Pacific Railroad for transport to an army prison in Omaha. After being equipped with two Hotkiss machine guns at the machine gun position on the high ground, Forsyth settled down that night and drank a can of whiskey to celebrate the capture of Chief Bigfoot.

The chief lay in his tent, too sick to sleep and having trouble breathing.His people, in spite of their protective ghost shirts and their belief in the prophecies of a new savior, feared the horsemen who camped around them, some of whom joined forces at the Battle of Little Bighorn fourteen years ago. After defeating these soldiers, the chiefs Mo Yanan, Wallace, Guo Furui, and Yi Geli Indians do not know if they still have the idea of ​​​​revenge in their hearts. The next morning, the bugle was blown, and Vasumasa, one of Big Foot's warriors, whose name was changed to Dewey Beard after many years, said: Then I saw the big soldiers on horseback, rounding us up; declared He said that all the men should come out and have a lecture in the middle. After the lecture is over, they will be sent to the Songling Management Office.Bigfoot was lifted out of the cone and sat in front of his tent, and the old men gathered around him and sat down near him in the center.

After a breakfast ration of hard biscuits was distributed, Colonel Forsyth informed the Indians that they were now to be disarmed.They wanted guns and weapons, White Spear said: So we all handed over our guns and piled them in the middle.The chief of the soldiers was not satisfied with the number of surrendered guns, so he sent tolerance to search for cones.They went straight into the tent, and came out with bundles and tore them apart, said the Chief Dog, and they came out with axes, knives, and tent stakes, all in piles beside the guns. The soldier chief was still dissatisfied, and ordered the soldiers to take off the blankets on their bodies, and let the searchers come to search for weapons.Anger appeared on the faces of the Indians, but only the mage Huang Bird made an obvious protest.He danced the steps of the ghost dance and sang a hymn, reassuring the soldiers that the guns of the soldiers could not penetrate their holy shirts.Guns will not run towards you, he sang in the Sioux dialect: The grassland is huge, and guns will not run towards you.

The cavalry found only two rifles, a brand new Winchester belonging to a black mountain dog boy of the Miniconyo tribe.He held up the Winchester over his head, and cried that it was his that he had paid so much for.Years later, Dewey Beard remembered that the Black Mountain Dog was deaf.If they ignore him, he'll put the gun where it belongs.They grabbed him and pushed him hastily in an easterly direction.Even at that time, he was still careless, the gun didn't point at anyone, he just planned to put the gun down.They came and grabbed the gun he was about to drop, and just as they turned him around there was a shot, quite loud.I can't tell if anyone was hit, but then there was a crash.

The sound was like tearing the canvas, that sound of heaven falling apart.Rough Pi said: Fear of the enemy is described as the sound of thunder. Zhuanying said that Black Mountain Dog is a lunatic, a young man with bad influence, and actually a gangster.He said that the black mountain dog fired a shot, and the soldiers immediately returned fire, followed by indiscriminate killings. In the first few seconds of this riot, the sound of lance fire was deafening, the air was filled with gunpowder smoke, and there was Bigfoot lying dying in the snow.Amidst the bombardment of gunfire, there was a brief lull, and small groups of Indians and soldiers huddled together and used knives, sticks, and pistols.There were very few Indians who had weapons and were about to flee, but at this moment the Hotkiss machine guns on the high hill opened fire on them, blasting into the Indian camp at a rate of almost one shell per second. , the flying fragments smashed the cone curtain, killing men, women and children. We tried to escape, said Louie the Weasel Bear, but they shot at us like buffalo. I know some white people are good, but the soldiers must be mean, shooting at children and women.Indian warriors wouldn't do that to white kids. I fled from that place and followed those who fled. A young woman, Haji Ketvin, said: When we crossed a ravine, my grandpa, grandma and brother were all killed, and my right buttock was pierced. , got hit in the right wrist too, and I couldn't walk, I couldn't go any further; the soldiers got me to a place where a little girl ran towards me and crawled into the blanket. By the end of this madness, Bigfoot and half of the Multi-Clan people had been killed or badly wounded, a hundred and fifty-three were known to have been killed, but many wounded crawled away and died later.According to one estimate, of the original three hundred and fifty men, women, and children, the final number of deaths totaled nearly three hundred.Among the losses of the soldiers, 25 people were killed and 39 people were injured, most of whom were hit by their own guns or shell fragments. As the wounded cavalry began their march to the Pine Ridge Management Post, Tolerance also sent out to the field at Wounded Knee to collect the Indians who were still alive and load them into carts.At the end of the day, there was evidently a snowstorm coming, and the dead Indians were left where they had fallen. (After the blizzard, a burial team was sent back to Wounded Knee to find the bodies, including Bigfoot's, frozen into strange shapes.) Carloads of injured Sioux men and women (four men and forty-seven women and children) arrived at Pine Ridge after dark.For all the barracks were full of privates, and they were lying in open wagons in the bitter cold while a clumsy army officer looked for them.Finally, an Anglican church was opened, the pews were removed, and straw was strewn over the rough floor. This was the fourth day after Christmas in 1890. When the first batch of ripped and bloody bodies were carried into this candle-lit church, those who were still conscious could still see Christmas. The green leaves of the festival are still hanging on the empty rafters.Across the front of the altar, just above the pulpit, there is a horizontal drape with thick and large characters: peace on earth, Joy to man.