ez Perce chief Joseph's running battle in 1877 against superior US army forces, and the Chiricahua Geronimo's long duel with authorities in the Southwest, resulting in his capture and imprisonment in 1886. Toward the close of that period, the Ghost Dance religion, arising out of the dream revelations of a young Paiute Indian, Wovoka, promised the Indians a return to the old life and reunion with their departed kinsmen. The songs and ceremonies born of this revelation swept across the northern Plains. The movement came to an abrupt end December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. Believing that the Ghost Dance was disturbing an uneasy peace, government agents moved to arrest ringleaders. Sitting Bull was killed (December 15) while being taken into custody, and two weeks later units of the US 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee massacred more than 200 men, women, and children who had already agreed to return to their homes. A further major shift of policy had occurred in 1871 after congressional discussions lasting several years. U.S. presidents, with the advice and consent of the Senate, had continued to make treaties with the Indian tribes and commit the United States to the payment of sums of money. The House of Representatives protested, since a number of congressmen had come to the view that treaties with Indian tribes were an absurdity (a view earlier held by Andrew Jackson). The Senate yielded, and the act of March 3, 1871, declared that "hereafter no Indian nation or tribe" would be recognized "as an independent power with whom the United States may contract by treaty. "Indian affairs were brought under the legislative control of the Congress to an extent that had not been attempted previously. Tribal authority with respect to criminal offenses committed by members within the tribe was reduced to the extent that murder and other major crimes were placed under the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The most radical undertaking of the new legislative policy was the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887. By that time the Indian tribes had been moved out of the mainstreams of traffic and were settled on lands that they had chosen out of the larger areas that they had formerly occupied. Their choice in most cases had been confirmed by treaty, agreement, act of Congress, or executive order of the president. The tribes that lived by hunting over wide areas found reservation confinement a threat to their existence. Generally, they had insisted on annuity payments or rations, or both, and the US peace commissioners had been willing to offer such a price in return for important land cessions. In time the view came to be held that reservation life fostered indolence and perpetuated customs and attitudes that held Indians back from assimilation. The strategy offered by proponents of this theory was the Allotment Act authorizing the president to divide the reservations into individual parcels and to give every Indian, whether h...
