Across the Fence: Ms. Goodale and The Ghost Dance War (Part III)

William Fitch Kelly, a reporter for the Nebraska State Journal, sent a dispatch to his editors from Wounded Knee Creek (via Rushville, Neb.) on Dec. 29, 1890.

The eyewitness account included the following: "Soon the mounted troops were after them, shooting them down on every hand. ... Just now it is impossible to state the exact number killed outright. The soldiers are shooting them down wherever found, no quarter given by anyone. ... Before night I doubt if either a buck or squaw out of all Big Foot's band will be left to tell the tale ..."

As news of the massacre circulated among the people at Pine Ridge and fearing further attacks, many who were camped there took down their lodges, loaded their wagons and disappeared to the north. In the chapel where Ms. Goodale was helping prepare bags of candy for the children, there came a swarm of terrified church members from the agency, women and children crying in fear. The shutters of the church were closed and secured while the missionaries attempted to calm the panicked mothers.

Outside the shuttered church the events of the tragic day unfolded as those inside sat in fear and contemplated their unknown fates. The long day passed and night had fallen when soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry burst through the chapel doors carrying many of their wounded. Included, according to Ms. Goodale's account, were 33 severely wounded Sioux prisoners. Six of those prisoners were men the other 27 were women and children.

The chapel was quickly converted to a hospital as pews were removed and the floors covered with a thick layer of straw for bedding the wounded. Women brought quilts from their homes to cover the shivering patients and all available volunteers assisted Dr. Charles Eastman as he tended their wounds. Eastman was a graduate of Boston University, where he received his degree in medicine.

Eastman, a mixed-blood Santee Sioux, had returned to Pine Ridge to practice medicine among his people. Later in the night, an army surgeon came to the chapel to assist Eastman, but the wounded Sioux women shrank away from him in fear.

In the few days that followed, humanitarian appeals in Boston newspapers brought supplies of fresh linens, clothing and more blankets. Cots replaced the straw scattered on the floor and a trained nurse was sent to assist the doctors. Most of those who were treated in those first hours succumbed to their injuries with only a few surviving.

On the third day, after the massacre, several stragglers wandered in to the makeshift hospital. Some survivors were picked up on the killing grounds and had somehow survived more than 48 hours, exposed to the elements and blanketed by a layer of fresh snow. James Mooney wrote in his 1892-93 Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology: "A number of women and children were found still alive, but all badly wounded or frozen or both, and most of them died after being brought in. Four babies were found alive under the snow, wrapped in shawls and laying beside their dead mothers, whose last thought had been of them. They were all badly frozen and only one lived."

Whether a compliment, statement of fact or a reference to the nature of the "savage" Indian, Mooney continued; "The tenacity of life so characteristic of wild people as well as wild beasts was strikingly illustrated in the case of these wounded and helpless women and children who thus lived three days through a Dakota blizzard, without food, shelter, or attention to their wounds."

That one miraculous survivor was a months-old infant girl who was found by Eastman as he searched the Wounded Knee Creek area for survivors. The child was found wrapped in a tattered shawl and clutched in the arms of her dead mother. The little girl wore a buckskin cap covered with intricate beadwork depicting the red, white and blue of the American flag.

Eastman took the little girl to the agency where the Sioux women called her, Zitkala-noni, "Lost Bird." Lost Bird was adopted by General Colby, the commander of the Nebraska troops, and baptized as Marguerite. She was later featured in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and died at the age of 29 years in 1919. In July 1991, the Lakota people brought her home to Wounded Knee where she was re-interred, 100 years after being found there.

Another survivor was Herbert Zitkalazi "Yellow Bird," the 4-year-old son of the Sioux holy man. He was riding his pony in front of his family lodge when the shooting began. He remembered, "My father ran and fell down and blood came out of his mouth, and then a soldier put his gun up to my pony's nose and shot him, and then I ran and a policeman got me." He was adopted by Lucy Arnold, a teacher who had been teaching the Sioux at Pine Ridge.

On Dec. 29, 1890 at Wounded Knee Creek, 438 troopers of the 7th U.S. Cavalry and 22 artillerymen with four Hotchkiss guns, surrounded the Sioux camp of Chief Big Foot that consisted of about 400 people. Of those 400 Sioux, about 120 of them could be classified as warriors though it has been fairly well substantiated that less than half of those 120 men had any weapons and scant ammunition.

After the killing had stopped, a span of about one and one-half hours, the 7th Cavalry had lost 31 men and 36 wounded. In the Sioux camp, Chief Big Foot lay dead, with more than 20 bullet wounds, along with nearly 100 men and 200 women and children. 44 wounded would survive.

However, Colonel Forsyth of the 7th Cavalry would state in his official report that the battle was a "gallant" military action under his command where approximately ninety "bucks, crazed by religious fanaticism" had been killed and "comparatively few squaws injured."

Newspaper reporter, William Kelly closed his Dec. 29 dispatch to the Nebraska State Journal saying, "The members of the 7th Cavalry have once more shown themselves to be heroes in deeds of daring. Single handed conflicts were seen all over the field."

In the aftermath of the massacre, it was confirmed that the first shot was fired by a Sioux. However, this shot was an accidental discharge of a weapon being wrestled away from a man who was turning his weapon over to a soldier. After that first shot, the artillerymen and the Cavalry opened fire.

Colonel Forsyth stood court-martial but was acquitted. General Miles testified at the proceedings and again in 1917 wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs restating that, "The action of the commanding officer in my judgment at the time – and I so reported – was most reprehensible. The disposition of the troops was such that in firing upon the warriors they fired directly toward their own lines, and also into the camp of the women and children, and I have regarded the whole affair as most unjustifiable and worthy of the severest condemnation."

By New Year's Day 1891, a long trench had been dug to serve as a mass grave for those Sioux men, women and children who lay frozen at the site of Big Foot's camp. Most of the Sioux men lay near what had been Big Foot's lodge. They all had been gathered together there and surrounded by the soldiers. When the first shot was fired the Hotchkiss guns quickly dispatched them. Other men, women and children lay scattered around the camp and still other bodies of women and children were found along the banks of Wounded Knee Creek for up to three miles distant from the camp. These were victims who had fled from the camp in an effort to escape the fighting but were pursued by mounted cavalry and executed as they ran.

Mooney wrote in his report that, "Many of the bodies were stripped by the whites, who went out in order to get the 'ghost shirts,' and the frozen bodies were thrown into the trench stiff and naked. They were only dead Indians. As one of the burial party said, 'It was a thing to melt the heart of a man, if it was of stone, to see those little children, with their bodies shot to pieces, thrown naked into the pit.' "

As they were working together, tending the wounded and dying, Elaine Goodale and Charles Eastman fell in love and were married in 1891. Both Elaine and Charles were active in their efforts to help the Sioux tribes assimilate. Elaine loved the people and their culture but was certain that unless they abandoned their ways and adopted the ways of the whites they would never be able to co-exist in the changing times.

Charles became a sought after speaker and wrote several books, with Elaine's help, about his life and the Sioux culture. Elaine also was an accomplished author with her later works being recognized as "important historical documents on the transition period in Plains Indian history."

M. Timothy Nolting is an award-winning Nebraska columnist and freelance writer. Contact Tim via email at [email protected]