Sami, natives of northern Norway whom Jackson
recruits for his enterprise. Despite Jackson’s en-
thusiasm and the United States’s support, the plan
to turn Alaskan Inuit into reindeer herders will
ultimately fail, largely because of the Inuit’s lack
of interest.
The Act for the Relief of the Mission Indians
is passed.
Congress offers federal protection to California In-
dian lands by passing the Act for the Relief of the
Mission Indians. Through this law, the United States
will establish 32 small reservations scattered through-
out southern California over the next 18 years.
January 1
Nearly 150 Wounded Knee victims
are buried.
Burial crews are sent to Wounded Knee to round
up the bodies and search for any survivors of the
massacre there three days earlier (see entry for
DECEMBER 29, 1890). The frozen corpses of
146 men, women, and children are interred
in a mass grave. Many of the bodies have been
stripped of their Ghost Dance shirts and other
paraphernalia by soldiers seeking souvenirs of the
slaughter. The crews find few survivors. Most of
the wounded have already been found and taken
in by relatives before their arrival. Although esti-
mates differ, probably at least 300 of the some
350 Indians at Wounded Knee died either at
site or later under the care of their loved ones.January 15Ghost Dance advocate Kicking Bear
surrenders to the U.S. Army.
Schooled in the Ghost Dance by its founder Wo-
voka (see entry for JANUARY 1, 1889), Oglala Sioux
Kicking Bear is a strong advocate of the new Ghost
Dance Religion embraced by many Plains tribes.
Expelled from the Standing Rock Reservation,
Kicking Bear and his people continue to perform
the Ghost Dance on the Pine Ridge Reservation
even after the army’s slaughter of more than 300
adherents at Wounded Knee (see entry for DECEM-
BER 29, 1890). When army troops surround their
encampment, Kicking Bear negotiates a peaceful
surrender of about 5,000 Lakota Sioux to General
Nelson A. Miles to avoid further bloodshed. The
event is the last formal surrender by Indians to the
U.S. Army in the Plains Indian Wars.February 28Congress amends the General
Allotment Act.
The General Allotment Act (see entry for FEBRU-
ARY 8, 1887) granted each head of a family 160 acres
of land on an allotted reservation. The amendment
to the act calls for 80-acre allotments to be given
to every adult on the tribal roll. More important,
the amendment allows Indians to lease allotments
to non-Indians.“The Whites, by law of con-
quest, by justice of civilization,
are masters of the American
continent, and the best safety
of the frontier settlers will
be secured by the total anni-
hilation of the few remaining
Indians.... Why not annihila-
tion? Their glory has fled, their
spirit broken, their manhood
effaced, better that they should
die than live the miserable
wretches that they are.”
—novelist and journalist L. Frank
Baum, in the Aberdeen Saturday
Pioneer one week after the 1890
massacre at Wounded KneeP