GHOST SHIRT

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Accompanied by Sioux prayers and the keening of Scottish bagpipes, a plain cotton shirt was returned to South Dakota this past summer. 

The shirt, probably stripped by a soldier from the corpse of a Miniconjou Lakota at Wounded Knee, has been on display at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, since 1892.  Museum officials said it was acquired from someone in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. 

Mid sacred ceremonies the sacred shirt was delivered by the director of the Scotland museum to the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation on July 31 and to the Pine Ridge Reservation on August 1.  Several hundred people gathered at the Wounded Knee Cemetery on Pine Ridge, where the massacre occurred 109 years ago. 

Hungry and despairing, Sioux Indians had sought hope in the Ghost Dance religion spread by a Paiute leader named Wovoka.  Dancers believed that if they dressed in the specially marked white shirts they would be protected, and the world of their ancestors, before the white man, would return. 

As an old man, the Lakota spiritual leader, Black Elk, sadly looked back on the great tragedy of 1890 in his autobiography, BLACK ELK SPEAKS.  "I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard.  A people's dream died there.  It was a beautiful dream......  The nation's hoop is broken and scattered."  And he prayed. 

A Glasgow city official, who accompanied the shirt to South Dakota, said resi-dents of the city felt strongly that the shirt should be returned.  "These people have lost enough," said Liz Cameron.  "Give them back what we can give them... the shirt." 

After ceremonies at the two Reservations, the shirt was delivered to the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre, SD, where it will be exhibited.  Lakota leaders say it will be returned to one of the Reservations, if a Museum is constructed. 

"The day has filled my heart," said Dora Bruguier, a descendant of a Wounded Knee survivor.  Perhaps, along with the efforts of modern Lakota people on many fronts, the return of this revered artifact will speed the healing of the Sacred Hoop.