This painting commerates the Massacre of Wounded knee, December 28, 1890. The center of the picture shows the Ghost Dance. Chief Black Foot's men, under a white flag of truce, were surrendering their guns to the Army when a gun went off, and the Army began shooting, killing and wounding men, women and children. Chief Sitting Bull had been killed by Indian police two weeks earlier and incident that is documented for that year on the Hunkpapa winter count.

Wayce writes the following about the Ghost Dance

Preparation for the Dance

On several occasions the dance ground was consecrated before the performance, one of the leaders going all about the place, sprinkling some kind of sacred powder over the ground and praying the while. Frequently in the dance one more of the leaders while sitting within the circle would beat upon the earth with his extended palm, then lay his hand upon his head, afterward blow into his hand, and then repeat the operation, praying all the time Sometimes the hypnotist would beat the ground in the same way and then lay his hand on the head of the subject. No satisfactory explanation of this ceremony was obtained beyond the general idea that the earth, like the sun, the fire, and the water, is sacred.

Giving The Feather

The ceremony of “giving the feather” was an official ordination of the priests in the dance, conferred on them by the apostle who first brought the ceremony to the tribe. Among the Arapaho Caddo, Kiowa and adjoining tribes in the south the feather was conferred by Sitting Bull himself. The feather was thus givin to seven leaders, or sometimes to fourteen, that is seven men and seven women the number seven being sacred with most tribes and more particularly in the Ghost dance.

References:

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York: Holt & Reinhart. 1971.

Mooney, James.The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1991.