Wounded Knee Massacre Totally Explained

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    ť For other uses, see Wounded Knee (disambiguation).

The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as The Battle at Wounded Knee Creek, was the last major armed conflict between the Lakota Sioux and the United States, subsequently described as a "massacre" by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
   On December 29, 1890, 500 troops of the U.S. 7th Cavalry, supported by four Hotchkiss guns (a lightweight artillery piece capable of rapid fire), surrounded an encampment of Miniconjou Sioux (Lakota) and Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota) with orders to escort them to the railroad for transport to Omaha, Nebraska. One day prior, the Sioux had given up their protracted flight from the troops, and willingly agreed to turn themselves in at the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota. They were the very last of the Sioux to do so. They were met by the 7th Cavalry, who intended to use a display of force coupled with firm negotiations to gain compliance from them.
   The commander of the 7th had been ordered to disarm the Lakota before proceeding. During the process of disarmament, a deaf tribesman refused the order to give up his rifle unless he was paid fair value for it . This set off a chain reaction of events that led to a scene of sheer chaos and mayhem with fighting between both sides in all directions.
   By the time it was over, more than 300 men, women and children of the Lakota Sioux lay dead. Twenty-five troopers also died during the massacre, some believed to have been the victims of "friendly fire" as the shooting took place at point blank range in chaotic conditions. Around 150 Lakota are believed to have fled the chaos, an unknown number dying from hypothermia.
   The site has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Lakota prelude

In February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota, an area that formerly encompassed the majority of the state, into five relatively smaller reservations. This was done to accommodate homesteaders from the east and was in accordance with the government’s policy of "breaking up tribal relationships" and "conforming Indians to the white man’s ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must." Once on the half-sized reservations, tribes were separated into family units on plots, forced to farm, raise livestock, and send their children to boarding schools that forbade any inclusion of traditional Native American culture and language.
   To support the Sioux during the period of transition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was delegated the responsibility of supplying the Sioux -- traditionally a hunter-gatherer society -- with food, and hiring white farmers to teach them agriculture. The farming plan failed to take into account the difficulty Sioux farmers would have in trying to cultivate crops in the semi-arid region of South Dakota. By the end of the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was unable to produce substantial agricultural yields. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the government’s patience with supporting the so-called “lazy Indians" ran out. Rations to the Sioux were cut in half. With the American bison virtually eradicated from the plains a few years earlier, the Sioux began to starve. Increased performances of the Ghost Dance religious ceremony ensued, frightening the supervising agents of the BIA, who requested and were granted thousands more troops deployed to the reservation.
   The Lakota were overwhelmed by the flood of settlers onto their lands. A gold rush in the 1870’s brought hordes of prospectors and settlers. Many whites wanted to claim the Black Hills, which formed part of the assigned land given to the Lakota by the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), but the Lakota were not interested in selling this territory which they considered sacred.
   In 1876, frustrated by the refusal of the Lakota to give up the Black Hills, the government ordered the Lakota confined to their reservation; Indians found off the reservation were to be returned by force. By 1889, the situation on the reservations was getting desperate. The U.S. failed to honor its promise to increase the amount of food and other necessities for the Lakota after reducing their land area.

Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dance -- a form of circle or spirit dancing, which according to anthropologist James Mooney had existed for centuries -- is a religious ceremony by which participants believe that their dead relatives will come back and all white people will perish. Paiute prophet Wovoka reported in 1888 that the Great Spirit had spoken to him in a vision, asking him to take the message to all Indian tribes that performing the Ghost Dance would bring about a renewal of the earth, the return of the buffalo, and their deceased loved ones would live again. Wovoka preached peace, saying that God asked Indians not to fight each other or the white man. ("You must not fight. Do right always.") Tribal leaders met with Wovoka and took the message home. Many people began to hold Ghost Dances according to Wovoka's advice, and the movement spread to the Plains and beyond. All other tribes adopted Wovoka's advice against violence except for the Sioux -- they were still quite bitter over the broken land treaty in February of 1890 and the reduction in rations from the deal (ref. "Lakota prelude"). This left the Sioux with a deep hatred for the white man (Utley, p. 72).
Although Ghost Dancing was a spiritual ceremony, some agents for other tribes misinterpreted it as a war dance. But in the case of the Sioux, it represented antagonism of the whites and a doctrine precipitating war -- this was a far cry from the pacifistic teachings of the Pauite prophet Wovoka (Utley, p. 73). In any case, fearing that the Ghost Dance philosophy signaled an Indian uprising, many agents outlawed it. In October 1890, believing that a renewal of the earth would take place in the coming spring, the Lakota of Pine Ridge and Rosebud defied their agents and continued to hold dance rituals. Lakota delegations to Wovoka's Paiute reserve had reinterpreted Wovoka's message to suggest that the whites would disappear (they would be exterminated by the Messiah - Utley, p. 73) and that the renewed earth would be for Indians alone (Mooney, p. 820). Lakota Ghost Dancers wore Ghost Shirts, specially-consecrated garments which they believed rendered them impervious to harm from rifle bullets when in battle against the whites (Utley, p. 86). Devotees were dancing to pitches of excitement that frightened the government employees — "the Sioux apostles had perverted Wovoka's doctrine into a militant crusade against the white man" (Utley, p. 87) — setting off a panic among white settlers. Pine Ridge agent Daniel F. Royer then called for military help to restore order with the Indians and subdue the frenzy among white settlers.

Big Foot

On December 15, Chief Sitting Bull was killed at his cabin on the Standing Rock Reservation by Indian police who were trying to arrest him on government orders. Sitting Bull was one of the Lakota’s tribal leaders, and after his death, refugees from Sitting Bull’s tribe fled in fear. They joined Sitting Bull's half brother, Big Foot, at a reservation at Cheyenne River. Unaware that Big Foot had renounced the Ghost Dance, General Nelson A. Miles ordered him to move his people to a nearby fort. On December 28, 1890, Big Foot became seriously ill with pneumonia. His tribe then set off to seek shelter with Red Cloud at Pine Ridge reservation. Big Foot’s band was intercepted by Major Samuel Whitside and his battalion of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment and were escorted five miles (8 km) westward to Wounded Knee Creek. There, Colonel James W. Forsyth arrived to take command and ordered his guards to place four Hotchkiss guns in position around the camp. The soldiers numbered around 500 — the Indians, 350; all but 120 were women and children. A rumor among the Lakota during the evening of December 28, 1890, said that all Indians were to be deported to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), which had the reputation for living conditions far worse than any prison. The Lakota became fearful that the rumor was true. The interpreter wasn't fluent in the peculiar dialect of Hohwoju used by Big Foot's people, and he mistranslated the Indians' speeches, making them appear more belligerent than they actually were. Eyewitness accounts also claimed that the soldiers had been drinking and celebrating the capture of Big Foot.

The Massacre

On December 29, Lakota Ghost Dancers were on their way through the badlands toward Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. James W. Forsyth and 7th Cavalry Regiment intercepted the dancers and ordered them to hand over their weapons. A search was ordered, and some of the weapons were collected. A shot was fired, prompting a call for the Cavalry to fire. At first, the struggle was fought at close range, but the fight moved as the Lakota sought to escape fire from the troops, who chased them for miles across the prairies. By the end of fighting, which lasted less than an hour, at least 150 Lakota had been killed and 50 wounded. Army casualties numbered 25 dead and 39 wounded.
   Specific details over what triggered the fight are debated. According to historian Robert Utley, a medicine man called Yellow Bird began to perform the Ghost Dance, reiterating his assertion to the Lakota that the ghost shirts were bullet-proof. As tension mounted, Black Coyote refused to give up his rifle. He was deaf and hadn't understood the order. Another Indian said: "Black Coyote is deaf." (He didn't speak English). When the soldier refused to heed his warning, he said "Stop! He can't hear your orders!" At that moment, two soldiers seized him from behind and in the struggle (it is believed but not necessarily accurate that) Black Coyote came down with his rifle; it discharged, sending a shot into the air. At that same moment, Yellow Bird threw some dust into the air, and approximately five young Lakota men with concealed weapons threw aside their blankets, and pointed their rifles at Troop K of the 7th. The Lakota opened fire on the soldiers doing damage, however, a massive volley was returned back at the tribe.
   According to Commanding General Nelson A. Miles, a "scuffle occurred between one warrior who had [a] rifle in his hand and two soldiers. The rifle was discharged and a massacre occurred, not only the warriors but the sick Chief Big Foot, and a large number of women and children who tried to escape by running and scattering over the prairie were hunted down and killed."
   The military hired civilians to bury the dead Lakota after an intervening snowstorm had abated. Arriving at the battleground, the burial party found the deceased frozen in contorted positions by the freezing weather. They were gathered up and placed in a common grave. It was reported that four infants were found still alive, wrapped in their deceased mothers' shawls. In all, 84 men, 44 women, and 18 children reportedly died on the field, while at least seven of Lakota were mortally wounded.

Aftermath

Army Court of Inquiry convened by Miles criticized Forsyth for his tactical dispositions but otherwise exonerated him of responsibility. The Court of Inquiry, however, wasn't conducted as a formal court-martial, and without the legal boundaries of that format, several of the witnesses minimized their comments and statements to protect themselves or peers. Ultimately the Secretary of War concurred and reinstated Forsyth to command of the 7th. Testimony before the court indicated that for the most part troops attempted to avoid non-combatant casualties. Nevertheless Miles ignored the results of the Court of Inquiry and continued to criticize Forsyth, whom he believed had deliberately disobeyed orders. The concept of Wounded Knee as a deliberate massacre rather than a tragedy caused by poor decisions stems from Miles.
The American public's reaction to the battle at the time was generally favorable. Twenty Medals of Honor were awarded for the action. A decade later, when these were reviewed, Miles saw that they were retained. Currently, Native Americans are urgently seeking the recall of what they refer to as "Medals of Dis-Honor". Historian Will G. Robinson has noted the discrepancy between these twenty medals handed out following the events at Wounded Knee and the fact that only three such Medals of Honor were awarded among the 64,000 South Dakotans that fought for four years of the Second World War.
Many non-Lakota living near the reservations interpreted the battle as a defeat of a murderous cult, though some confused Ghost Dancers with Native Americans in general. In an editorial response to the event, a young newspaper editor, L. Frank Baum (later known as the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), wrote in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer on January 3, 1891:

The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we'd better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.

More than 80 years after the massacre, beginning on February 27, 1973, Wounded Knee was also the site of a 71-day standoff between federal authorities and militants of the American Indian Movement.

Skirmish at Drexel Mission

Historically, Wounded Knee is generally considered to be the end of the Indian Wars, the collective multi-century series of conflicts between colonial and U.S. forces and American Indians. It was also responsible for the subsequent severe decline in the Ghost Dance movement, however it wasn't the last armed conflict between Native Americans and the United States.
A related skirmish took place at Drexel Mission the day after the Battle of Wounded Knee that resulted in the death of one soldier and the wounding of six others from K Troop, 7th Cavalry, with an unknown number of Lakota casualties. Lakota Ghost Dancers from the bands which had been persuaded to surrender had fled after news of Wounded Knee reached them, and they burned several buildings at the mission. They ambushed a squadron of the 7th Cavalry responding to the incident and pinned it down until a relief force from the 9th Cavalry arrived; it had been trailing the Lakota from the White River. Lieutenant James D. Mann, who had been a key participant in the outbreak of firing at Wounded Knee, died of his wounds 17 days later at Ft. Riley, Kansas, on January 15, 1891. This engagement is often overlooked, being overshadowed by the previous day's tragedy.

Popular culture

In the late 20th century, critical reaction to the event became more widespread and vocal. Many consider the incident one of the most grievous in United States history. In 1970, it was the subject of the best-selling book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by historian Dee Brown.
   In 1972, Johnny Cash wrote and released a song entitled "Big Foot" describing the tragedy at Wounded Knee. Like many of Cash's songs about Native Americans, it describes their poor treatment and victimization.
   In 1973, the American rock band Redbone, which was formed by two Native Americans, released the politically oriented song "We were all wounded at Wounded Knee", recalling the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890. The song ends with the subtly altered sentence "We were all wounded by Wounded Knee". The song reached the number one chart position across Europe but didn't chart in the U.S. where it was initially withheld from release and then banned by several radio stations.
'Wounded Knee' is a track from Nik Kershaw's 1989 album "The Works". The lyrics in the first two verses portray the persecution of fictitious native peoples of an "island in the sun" and a "village in the trees" after the arrival of the "white man". The theme in the chorus is that this is a repetition of what happened at Wounded Knee: "Oh no, not a Wounded Knee again". The final verse refers back to the plight of Native American Indians: "We were pow-wowing to our hearts content; We had the great spirit, we didn't need a president; 'Long came a white man from the civilized nations; now he ain't having second thoughts; but we've got reservations."
   The 1992 video game included a wild west level named "Bury My Shell at Wounded Knee".
   In 1992, the film Thunderheart starring Val Kilmer and Graham Greene was released, which intertwines a modern era crime-story with spiritual allusions to both the massacre in 1890, and a fictionalized version of the Wounded Knee incident which took place in 1973 on the Sioux reservation. Also in 1992 the Battle of Wounded Knee Creek was commemorated in the popular protest song Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee written by Buffy Sainte-Marie. This song includes not only allusions to the massacre but also references to the plight of present day Native American activists. Three years later the Indigo Girls released a cover of this song on their 1200 Curfews (Live) CD.
   In 1997, rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket found mainstream success with a song about Indian rights. The song "Crazy Life," which tells the story of Leonard Peltier in the 1970s, specifically mentions the Battle of Wounded Knee Creek. Petri Hiltunen's 2000 graphic novel "Aavetanssi" (Ghost Dance in Finnish) depicted the massacre from a Native American point of view. Five Iron Frenzy penned a song titled "The Day We Killed" which is found on their 2001 release titled: Electric Boogaloo. The song makes references to the massacre at Wounded Knee, and even has a reading of a quote by Black Elk that reads, "I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered along the crooked gulch [asplain as when I saw them with eyes still young.] And 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..." Primus recorded a Percussion Instrumental called "Wounded Knee" which appears on the album Pork Soda. Scottish songwriter Alan Cassidy makes reference to Wounded Knee in his highly charged song The Red The White and The Blue, "tell me of the Raj or Wounded Knee and you'll see clear...".
   The Battle of Wounded Knee Creek is briefly shown in the 2004 film Hidalgo. Frank Hopkins is portrayed as a half-Indian who in his work as a government dispatch rider, had carried the orders that directed the local commander to end the standoff by disarming the Indians and deporting them. However, an unexpected tragedy ensued, and subsequently, he held himself partly responsible for the deaths of the Indians. The Sioux are depicted performing the Ghost Dance very peacefully with participants that are primarily old men and women -- however, the reality of history was quite different. The particular tribes involved consisted of members of all ages and both sexes who were very mobile and self-sufficient in the wild -- they were equally adept at evading, pursuing, and fighting against the troops of the US Cavalry.
   The battle was reenacted for the 2005 film Into the West (TV miniseries), executive-produced by Steven Spielberg for Turner Network Television. The filming style for this sequence of the program is similar to Spielberg's recreation of the landing on Omaha Beach in his 1998 film Saving Private Ryan, including hand-held cameras and no music.
   In 2005 Marty Stuart produced "Badlands; Ballads of the Lakota" with original songs telling the story of the Lakota and a cover of the John R. Cash song "Bigfoot."
   In May 2007, HBO Films released the film adaptation of the Dee Brown bestseller "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" on the HBO television network. Like the book, the film culminates with the Battle of Wounded Knee Creek.

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