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Native Americans
The United States Grows
(1865-1900)

Massacre at Wounded Knee

Massacre at Wounded Knee
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   high interest, readability grades 3 to 5
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   4.61

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    leading, shots, illegal, fell, mostly, bury, marked, among, depend, after, several, order, government, pray, return, safety
     content words:    Ghost Dance, Some Indians, Chief Sitting Bull, Sitting Bull, One Indian, Big Foot, Pine Ridge Reservation, Wounded Knee Creek, Pine Ridge

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Massacre at Wounded Knee
By Cathy Pearl 		  
1     After the white settlers came to the plains, the Indians found that their lives had changed. They had to live on reservations and had to depend on the government to survive. The Indians did not want to live this way. They wanted to return to the life that they had before the settlers had moved to their lands.
 
2     In the late 1880s, a man began to speak to the Indians. His name was Wovoka. He was a prophet. Wovoka told the Indians that their old way of life was going to come back. The new world would be free of whites and filled with everything that Indians wanted. All the Indians had to do to make this new world come was dance the Ghost Dance.
 
3     The dancers wore shirts with bright colors. The shirts had buffalos and eagles on them. Some Indians thought that the shirts would keep them safe from bullets. When they danced, the Indians would join hands, chant, and pray. The Ghost Dance made the Indians very happy.
 
4     The Ghost Dance scared the settlers. They thought that the Indians were getting ready to go to war. They asked the government to help. The government made the Ghost Dance illegal.
 
5     In 1890, officers tried to arrest Chief Sitting Bull. They said that he was spreading the Ghost Dance among his people. There was a struggle and Sitting Bull was killed.

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