the morning
of December 29 Yellow Bear, one of the medicine prophets, suddenly
called upon them to resist--now was the hour--their Ghost shirts would
make the soldiers powerless. Young Black Fox, a Ghost Dancer of the
Cheyenne River reservation, threw up his gun, from under his blanket,
and fired at a soldier. All the soldiers fired; the Indians fought
back; the machine guns opened; and in a twinkling two hundred Sioux
men, women and children, and sixty soldiers, were piled, dead or
wounded, upon the snowy ground.

This was the battle of Wounded Knee, and was the last of the Ghost
Dancers.

Meanwhile, after the cavalry had rescued the police, Red Tomahawk put
the body of Sitting Bull into a wagon, and with two prisoners took his
troop up to the Standing Rock agency, to report.

Little Eagle, Afraid-of-soldiers, John Armstrong and Hawk Man No. 2
were dead; Lieutenant Bull Head and First Sergeant Shave Head died in
the hospital several days later. Bull Head had four wounds.

The four dead police were buried in the reservation cemetery on the
second day, December 17. A company of the Twenty-second Infantry fired
three volleys over their graves, and a great throng of the Sioux were
present, to mourn. The police had been brave men.

The police troop and the majority of the other Sioux there, asked that
Sitting Bull be not buried in this cemetery. His medicine had been
bad. Therefore this same morning he was buried, wrapped in canvas in a
neat coffin, in the military cemetery near by. His age was fifty-six.

The white head-board says simply:

SITTING BULL
Died
December 15, 1890

That was his end, on this earth; for, as far as known, he never came
back from spirit land. The pretended Messiah's promises proved false.
The white men remained stronger than the ghosts. The Indians seemed to
have no "medicine" to equal the terrible shoot-with-out-loading guns of
the blue-coat soldiers.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Boys' Book of Indian Warriors, by Edwin L. Sabin

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOYS' BOOK OF INDIAN WARRIORS ***

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