-RED CLOUD<O:P> </O:P>

   My name is Morning Cloud, I am Oglala Lakota, or Sioux as the white man calls us. I have been camped within sight of the Reservation agency for a number of months now. Our men have no weapons or bullets with which to hunt for food, their rifles having been taken away from them when they were made to surrender to Bear Coat Miles and his army of bluecoats. Enslaved, they then brought us here, to Wazi Ahanhan (Pine Ridge.) Our children are beginning to cry because they are hungry. Their bellies are empty and the sickness is upon them. The little food that has been supplied by the agency, most of which consisted of meat that was bad, has only just managed to get us through the last stages of this long cruel winter. Now the agency is telling us there is no more meat and turns us away empty handed. The Government agent does not hear the cries of our children, and even if he did, this would not prompt him into giving us what is rightfully ours.
   Now all we can do, to help keep the hunger at bay, is to boil a few vegetables that we find scattered here and there, dropped from the supply wagons to the fort, but this is not enough, the whole village needs meat.
   The old people, and the children, are becoming ill in ever larger numbers. The air is filled with the cries from those loved ones who are left behind to mourn their passing. I am fearful that my own children, who are growing weaker daily from the hunger, will be carried away from me. This is my biggest fear now.
   The men of the village seek out the holy men so that special prayers can be said in the hope that the Creator will take pity upon us and deliver us from this living hell. For has it not be foretold that if we dance then all the spirits of those who have gone before will rise up and live again?