David Vs Goliath Analysis

In most cases, Americans love a true underdog story. Movies that have a David vs Goliath-like plot, that culminates in a major battle that results in David overcoming all odds and concurring the Goliath-like antagonist. But the reality for most of history is that of tragedy and no heroic ending. This is the case the Lakota of the Pine Ridge Indian Agency fell victim to in the winter of 1890 when approximately 500 soldiers came to stop a ceremony later called the Ghost Dance. The horrifying ending to the once proud nation was a culmination of losing the Black Hills and amount of land allotted for reservation use, the expulsion of the Ghost Dance, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

You cannot begin to describe the what happened that winter day in 1890 without elaborating on the loss of the sacred Black Hill that many natives viewed

In 1874 George Armstrong Custer led an Expedition to find gold which leads President Ulysses S. Grant to send Officers to negotiate a sale of the protected area. Dee Brown elaborated on this in his book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. He states, “When the Teton Sioux tribes surrendered after the wars of 1876–77, they had lost the Powder River country and the Black Hills. The government’s next move was to change the western boundary of the Great Sioux Reservation from the 104th to the 103rd meridian, thus slicing off another fifty-mile strip adjoining the Black Hills, and taking an additional triangle of valuable land between the forks of the Cheyenne River.” (Brown. Pg. 383) In relocating reservation boundaries, it led to a great influx of American settlers and gold miners. This left many nonreservation Indians in outrage. After several years and hard-fought negotiations, President Grover Cleveland signed into office The Dawes Act of 1887. This act as described by The Indian Land Tenure Foundation states that, “In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, which authorized the president (at the time Grover