Wounded Knee Massacre

• Wounded Knee Massacre
• This source goes into great detail about the events leading up to the massacre and then talks about the casualties of the massacre. It can be used because it mainly explains what caused the Wounded Knee Massacre rather than going into detail about the massacre itself.
• Wounded Knee
• This source goes into more detail about the cause of the massacre at the scene (Wounded Knee Creek). It talks about what could have caused the massacre to break out rather than the events that took place leading up to the massacre, which makes it useful. 

The Wounded Knee Massacre was an event that took place at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890. One of the main contributors to the Wounded Knee Massacre was the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance was a spiritual movement that taught Indians that they had been defeated and forced to go to reservations because they angered the gods. The Lakota Sioux used the Ghost Dance as a way to discuss that the white man and his rule needed to be overthrown. The Sioux believed that a shirt known as the sacred ghost shirt would protect them from bullets during war. Sitting Bull was believed to be a Ghost Dancer. The whites tried to arrest him but killed him in the process, which caused the tensions between the whites and Indians at their reservation to increase. Another Sioux chief, Big Foot, and his band of Ghost Dancers (100 men, 200 women and children) were surrounded by 500 soldiers near Wounded Knee Creek. They were ordered to surrender their weapons, but they refused. As a result, fighting between the Ghost Dancers and the soldiers broke out. 150 Sioux, including Big Foot, were killed and another 50 were wounded. Only 25 soldiers died and 40 were wounded. The event is referred to as a battle but, in reality, it was an unnecessary massacre that could have easily been avoided.

Wounded Knee Massacre (link directly to picture)

Ghost Dance (link directly to picture)

Native Americans In-Class Work

In this activity, the first step was to find a definition of the words "savage" and "savagery." According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a savage is someone who is "not domesticated or under human control" and is "lacking the restraints normal to civilized human beings." According to the same dictionary, savagery is "a cruel or violent quality" or "a cruel or violent act or action." The next step was to read pages 18-21 of an online textbook passage from 1887. The final step was to use the search tool to find where the textbook refers to Indians as "savages" and read each of those passages.

If I were an American student reading this text as part of my schoolwork, I would probably view Native Americans as a group of people who were very independent and were not very aware of the world and people around them. One reason is because the Native Americans were very secluded to themselves. For example, they lived in huts made of poles and tree branches with their tribes and didn't come in contact with other people very often. I would also view the Native Americans as very hard-working, with the women doing all the work at the huts and the men doing all the hunting and fishing to provide food for their families. I would also think that the Indians were very violent. This is because the textbook says that the men were always carrying a number of weapons and were considered very brave if they had numerous large cuts and scars. Also, I would think that they were illiterate because it says that they had no books and only communicated among themselves by using figures. My final conclusion that would be made about Native Americans is that they were, well, savages. The textbook refers to Indians as savages about 19 times, and in most cases, it has to do with conflicts between the Indians (savages) and settlers. As a result of this, I would definitely think that Indians were under their own control and power rather than human control.

Old West Letter

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84038806/1874-12-04/ed-1/seq-2/

Letters from the West

1. This letter was written by a man who is traveling west. He is writing to his wife and baby about the land available to purchase in Nebraska where he plans on building a house. In the letter, he also talks about how he misses his wife and child very much. He wants to get the house built, so his family can come and live with him again.

2. One thing that stood out to me was how the man said that he was going to build his house out of sod and that it was a very effective method. He says that he has seen sod houses that have been made to look very nice by smoothing the sod, sweeping it with a broom until the grass roots stick out, and plastering it. He says, "They are just the most comfortable house to keep warm you ever seen." I found this very surprising because I didn't think that a house made of sod would be a very protective and warm house, but, according to the man, building a house with sod was very popular and very effective.

3. The act of letter writing at this point in time to people migrating west was extremely important, especially since paper wasn't very common. People used letter writing to write to their loved ones to inform them about the progress of their journey. It gave their loved ones a way to feel involved in the their life and journey. To loved ones, letter writing made them feel important because if they received a letter, they would know that their friend or family member was thinking about them on his or her journey and was willing to take the time out of their journey to write to them.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, Overland
http://www.over-land.com/diarybarnes.html