Chapter 27The year the white man called 1889 saw heightened tensions as the powers ruling this land feverishly prepared for statehood. This expectation of full admission to the nation drew new settlers to the land to cast covetous eyes upon reservation lands. Continual incursions at the borders brought acts of reprisal from tribesmen. Defending our own land brought the heavy hand of the military increasingly into the fray. In the background, loomed the Ghost Dance craze sweeping other parts of the land.
I made a point of talking to anyone who had visited other reservations where the dances were taking place and slowly came to understand that Wovoka, the Paiute medicine man, had awakened from a trance on the first day of the year and claimed that when the sun died, he’d gone up to Heaven a
