"On November 19th, the telegraph dispatches contained rumors of fighting. On the 20th, some of the newspapers had reports of an important battle with the Indians, the sole function of which, however, was the imaginative brain of the reporter. General Brooke immediately left Omaha for the Pine Ridge Agency, taking command in person."

Colby :

"On November 27th," General Colby continued, "there was an issue of beef to the Indians at Pine Ridge. The issue was made to about 2,600 Indians. The steers were all lean and in poor condition. Twelve hundred soldiers were moved in near the agency, and four guns were planted in a position to command the main avenues of approach to the agency, during the afternoon of the same day."

The large Oglala boarding school became a virtual prison, "the doors...were kept locked by day as well as by nights and the ground, surrounded by a high fence of barbed wire, constantly patrolled by armed guards," according to Elaine Goodale Eastman. "These boys and girls," she said, were "held partly as hostages for the good behavior of their parents..."

Eastman , who was Supervisor of Education in the two Dakotas, witnessed the Ghost Dance "on a bright November night," the only white person present. "No one with imagination could fail to see in the rite a genuine religious ceremony, a faith which, illusory as it was, deserved to be treated with respect," she wrote. Nearly every person familiar with the Lakota people, from General Miles to the missionary Thomas Riggs, echoed the same sentiment, whether or not they respected the religious worship it represented: the Ghost Dance did not promote a war-like spirit among the Indians, and it should not be interfered with.

The critical survival problems facing the Indians were of most concern to the whites closest to the Indians.

Colby :

"The drought and consequent failure of crops were everywhere general throughout the western states and territories and especially in the Dakotas, Wyoming and Nebraska. This affected the Indians as well as the white population in this section. This misfortune, to which was added the failure on the part of the government to supply the customary rations, produced actual suffering among the Indian tribes occupying the Pine Ridge, Rosebud and other reservations in the northwest. They were in need of the necessaries of life; a long cold winter was approaching, and starvation menaced them."

General Nelson Miles , commander of the Military Department of the Missouri, was the man in charge of the army in this area, and therefore is the most important single non-Indian source of information on Wounded Knee.

During this time, General Miles warned Washington:

"Discontent has been growing among the Indians for six months. The causes are numerous. First was the total failure of their crops this year. A good many of them put in crops and worked industriously; and were greatly discouraged when they failed, as they did utterly in some districts. Then the government cut down their rations, and the Appropriation Bill was passed so late that what supplies they received came unusually late. A good many of them have been on the verge of starvation. They have seen the whites suffering, too, and in many cases abandoning their farms."

Elaine Goodale Eastman , visiting Indian schools during the fall of 1890, also was alarmed: "In persistent hot winds the pitiful little gardens of the Indians curled up and died. Even the native hay crop was a failure. I had never before seen so much sickness. The appearance of the people shocked me. Lean and wiry in health, with glowing skins and the look of mettle, many now displayed gaunt forms, lackluster faces, and sad, deep-sunken eyes."

And then on December 15, what they all feared became reality. Sitting Bull was killed, in what General Colby, characterized as a "gentleman's agreement" to assassinate him.

Colby wrote that there was an

"understanding between the officers of the Indian and military departments that it would be impossible to bring Sitting Bull to Standing Rock alive, and even if successfully captured, it would be difficult to tell what to do with him. It is therefore believed that there was a tacit arrangement between the commanding officers and the Indian police, that the death of the famous old Medicine man was much preferred to his capture, and that the slightest attempt to rescue him should be the signal for his destruction."