In the 1870s a religious leader called Wovoka, taught that the Great Spirit would restore the Native's world to the way it was before the White Men arrived if the people would dance a special dance, called The Ghost Dance.
Wovoka
Ghost Shirt
The Massacre at Wounded Knee
The Ghost Dance was banned on the Sioux reservation but they continued to dance it. The army was called in to enforce the law. Sitting Bull was arrested and killed in a scuffle and at Wounded Knee Creek hundreds of Sioux men, women and children were killed when Government troops opened fire on a Sioux camp. The massacre at Wounded Knee is considered by most Native Americans as the event which marked the end of the old way of life. Many tribes were forced to leave their own lands and move to reservations west of the Mississippi river.
The Trail of Tears
The Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw people lived east of the Great Plains in the state of Georgia. These tribes were forced to march from their homelands to a new reservation in Oklahoma, over 1500 km away. Thousands died on the way, on what they call The Trail of Tears.
