Sioux to be given `ghost shirt'

GLASGOW CITY councillors yesterday made peace with the Lakota Sioux American Indians with a decision to return a holy relic - a "ghost shirt" allegedly worn at the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee.

The councillors will not be thanked by the museum world, not generally enthusiastic about the return of cultural treasures, but the Lakota could not have been more pleased. "It's like a great thanksgiving. I want to cry," said Marcella Le Beau, the secretary of the Wounded Knee Association.

The ghost shirt was brought to Glasgow in 1891 with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West travelling show and has been housed even since in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. No one is sure if it really was from the massacre.

The council decision was made after a meeting last week when the association pleaded for the shirt's repatriation.