Fourth Grade
Worksheets
Massacre at Wounded Knee
After the white settlers came to the plains, the Native Americans who already lived there found that their lives had changed. They had to live on reservations and had to depend on the government to survive. The Native Americans 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.
In the late 1880s, a man began to speak to the Native Americans. His name was Wovoka. He was a prophet. Wovoka told the Native Americans that their old way of life was going to come back. The new world would be free of whites and filled with everything that Native Americans wanted. All the Native Americans had to do to make this new world come was dance the Ghost Dance.
The dancers wore shirts with bright colors. The shirts had buffalos and eagles on them. Some Native Americans thought that the shirts would keep them safe from bullets. When they danced, the Native Americans would join hands, chant, and pray. The Ghost Dance made the Native Americans very happy.
The Ghost Dance scared the settlers. They thought that the Native Americans were getting ready to go to war. They asked the government to help. The government made the Ghost Dance illegal.
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.
