Black Elk Dream
“And so it was all over. I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.” (218) These were the words that Black Elk spoke of the dream that he and his people had of a country where they were allowed to live free and happy as they had before the white men invaded their territory. The Indians that Black Elk encountered in his lifetime all had only a simple dream to be able to live as they pleased. They
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They could not kill him in battle, however, so they lied to him to trick him to come to them. They told him that they would not harm him if he came to them to discuss with their leader. When he came unarmed, they captured and killed him. In the words of Black Elk: “Crazy Horse was dead. He was brave and good and wise. He never wanted anything but to save his people, and he fought the Wasichus only when they came to kill us in our own country. He was only thirty years old. They could not kill him in battle. They had to lie to him and kill him that way.” …show more content…
When the battle of Wounded Knee happened – which cannot really be called a battle, but more a bloody massacre – the Indians were not doing anything that could have been considered attacking the white men, or even controversial. They were doing a ghost dance, because they were fearful about what the white men were going to do to them. They wanted help from their deceased ancestors in the protection from the white men. But the white men had forbid them from dancing too much, and so took it as a threat, and released fire on the Indians. They massacred all Indians present, which were mostly innocent women and children. The massacre at Wounded Knee is kind of a touchy subject to me personally because I have visited the grave site in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and have seen firsthand the devastation that the massacre had on the people, and even how they remember it still today, and mourn for the dead
They could not kill him in battle, however, so they lied to him to trick him to come to them. They told him that they would not harm him if he came to them to discuss with their leader. When he came unarmed, they captured and killed him. In the words of Black Elk: “Crazy Horse was dead. He was brave and good and wise. He never wanted anything but to save his people, and he fought the Wasichus only when they came to kill us in our own country. He was only thirty years old. They could not kill him in battle. They had to lie to him and kill him that way.” …show more content…
When the battle of Wounded Knee happened – which cannot really be called a battle, but more a bloody massacre – the Indians were not doing anything that could have been considered attacking the white men, or even controversial. They were doing a ghost dance, because they were fearful about what the white men were going to do to them. They wanted help from their deceased ancestors in the protection from the white men. But the white men had forbid them from dancing too much, and so took it as a threat, and released fire on the Indians. They massacred all Indians present, which were mostly innocent women and children. The massacre at Wounded Knee is kind of a touchy subject to me personally because I have visited the grave site in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and have seen firsthand the devastation that the massacre had on the people, and even how they remember it still today, and mourn for the dead