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The dance should bring them salvation from misery, disease and death.

And he would bring back the herds of bison that had been grazing in the Great Plains before the Whites invaded, and these would be gone in the new age danced.

So preached the prophet Wovoka, who belonged to the northern Paiute, who lived mostly in Nevada.

At the end of the 1880s, Wovoka's “ghost dance” religion was actually supposed to stand at the transition to a new era, which, however, was not supposed to become paradise, but hell for the indigenous people of North America.

Because the more nations began to dance for their deepest longings, the greater the fear of the settlers and authorities that the trance of dance would lead to a great revolt of the Indians.

Soldiers of the 7th US Cavalry with rapid fire gun

Source: picture alliance / akg-images

The newly elected US President Benjamin Harrison wanted to prove crisis management and immediately relocated 9,000 cavalrymen to the Lakota reservations in the Plaines.

There the troops organized a massacre on December 29, 1890 at Wounded Knee (South Dakota), which killed hundreds of Lakota.

For the whites it was hyped up as the “last battle of the Indian wars”, for the indigenous people it became a symbol of their total submission.

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It began in November 1890 with a panicked telegram from an Indian agent in the Pine Ridge Reservation: "Indians dance in the snow and are wild and crazy ... we need protection and we need it now." The troop deployment that followed was the largest of the greats Levels had experienced since the end of the Civil War in 1865.

One of the first victims was the chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux, Sitting Bull. The 60-year-old had been one of the leaders of the warrior coalition that literally formed the 7th US Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer on Little Bighorn, Montana in June 1876 had wiped out.

The fact that, driven by necessity, he had temporarily hired himself out on Buffalo Bill's Wild West show could hardly detract from his reputation.

Now Sitting Bull's open sympathy for the "ghost dance" movement had brought further popularity, although he was certainly not their "apostle" when the white Indian warrior portrayed him.

When Sitting Bull refused to surrender to Fort Yates, a 40-strong reservation police unit appeared outside his home on the Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota, on December 15.

There was a scuffle in which the Indian police sergeant Bull Head shot the chief.

"The archenemy is dead and his followers will soon lose their enthusiasm," commented the New York Times.

Chief Sitting Bull (approx. 1831–1890)

Source: picture alliance / Design Pics

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But the opposite was the case.

Sitting Bull's violent death appeared to several peoples as a sign that their own extinction was imminent, and they arranged to meet for a grand "ghost dance" ceremony in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

Chief Spotted Elk also wanted to take part with his Minneconjou-Lakota-Sioux.

However, a few days after they left their Cheyenne River reservation, they were stopped by the 7th US Cavalry.

Spotted Elk, also known by the disparaging name "Big Foot", surrendered and was escorted with his family to a camp on Wounded Knee Creek.

There they were ordered to surrender their weapons, from which some concluded that they would have to leave their areas in South Dakota.

When more and more of the natives who were “devious” and “bloodthirsty” began to dance, the soldiers interpreted this as preparation for an attack.

Four Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns were immediately brought into position.

This is how the white audience imagined the "Battle of the Wounded Knee"

Source: Getty Images

On December 29th, the cavalry began searching the camp for hidden weapons.

When there was a dispute over a rifle, "a shot was fired that did not injure anyone, but immediately afterwards the inferno broke out," writes Lucerne historian Aram Mattioli.

"The Hotchkiss guns spared no one and even mowed down dozens of defenseless women and children."

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At least some cavalrymen had gotten themselves into shape with whiskey beforehand.

In the intoxication they finally saw the chance to take revenge for the heavy defeat of the 7th Cavalry 14 years ago at Little Bighorn, writes the Munich historian Heike Bungert in her new "History of the Indigenous Nations in the USA (CH Beck, 286 p. , 16.95 euros).

They got into a veritable frenzy of blood: fleeing mothers were gunned down with their children, reported one survivor: "Little boys who were unharmed came out ... Several soldiers surrounded them and slaughtered them."

Up to 400 indigenous people were killed, including Chief Spotted Elk.

The corpses were left behind in the snowdrift that set in, so that they froze into ice mummies.

25 soldiers died, mostly in the fire of their drunken comrades.

The US Congress awarded 20 others the Medal of Honor, the highest military award in the USA, for their achievements in the “battle”.

Attempts by indigenous groups to withdraw the honor of the “butchers” have so far had no consequences.

Another motion has now been submitted to the US Parliament.

The military action was "not heroic, but tragic and deeply shameful," said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, justifying her support.

After Wounded Knee, the last surviving American Indians finally disappeared into the dreariness of the reservations.

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