16 ChaPter^1
to stop, and the media wrote sensational stories about the “hostile” Sioux and
their dangerous dance. But the Natives resisted. Already dealing with a harsh
winter and outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, and the flu in 1890, they
continued to perform the Ghost Dance. So the War Department dispatched
federal troops in November and December to their reservation at Pine Ridge,
South Dakota to stop the Dance and arrest Sitting Bull; the army, however,
killed him, and some Sioux decided to take up arms against the 7th Cavalry.
U.S. soldiers, using rapid-fire rifles, met the Sioux near Wounded Knee Creek,
where a shot rang out and the army responded in force. They killed perhaps
400 Sioux [the army claimed 150], including women and children.
Wounded Knee was the last of those so-called Indian Wars of the 19th
Century. The Black Hills was now fully open for white miners and settlers
to search for gold or to ranch or farm. The Great Plains became one of the
areas for agricultural production in the world. And the West was fully open
to railroad development. A truly continental market had been created.
And the government did not stop there. In 1898, in the Curtis Act, the
government ended the sovereignty of Indian tribes, took back control of min-
eral rights from the Natives, and abolished tribal law and tribal courts. Then,
in the 1924 Snyder Act, the government gave citizenship to Indians, leading to
their assimilation into American life and all but eliminating their independent
culture, but still confining them to poverty and frequent alcoholism on the
reservation or in desolate rural areas.
Through force, law, and culture, the government and the ruling class,
after the Civil War, had used their power to fully expand into the West and
create a unified nation, greatly expand agricultural lands, find gold, link the
country by railroad, and eliminate anyone standing in their way, namely the
Indian people.the tRiuMph of industRial capitalisM and the GRowth of
aMeRican poweRWith Reconstruction over and westward expansion settled by the extermina-
tion of various Indian tribes, powerful Americans with the greatest economic
interests in the country’s growth took on their most important task–making
the full transition to an industrial capitalist society. In just a few generations,
the U.S. had grown from a country of farmers and craftsmen to one where