Wounded Knee - Blog Posts
The Massacre of Wounded Knee
The Massacre of Wounded Knee was one of the most devastating, horrifying acts of cruelty committed by soldiers of the U.S Army. Innocent men, women, and children of the Lakota tribe were shot to death, and over fifty-one were wounded, who soon succumbed to their injuries later. Over 250 people tragically died on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. And what exactly was the victim’s crime for death? The sacred dance, ‘Ghost Dance’.
‘‘The Ghost Dance, created by a Pauite Indigenous man from Nevada by the name of Wovoka, is an indigenous religious movement that envisioned the coming of a Native Messiah and a millennium marked by the return of the depleted game, the resurrection of deceased Indigenous relatives, and the supernatural disappearance of Euro-American colonizers. Misconstructing the Ghost Dance as insurrectionary, the U.S Government sent troops to suppress the feared threat to American sovereignty. The 7th Calvary, on December 29, 1890 held Lakota Chief Big Foot and his people in custody at the site; as the troops disarmed the Lakota people of weapons the next day, when an errant shot fired which lead to the resulting chaos.’’
Twenty-five soldiers also died and thirty-nine were also injured, and six of them succumbed and died later on. The army had rushed in additional forces under Colonel James W. Forsyth, who had quickly surrounded the encampment. To the army, disarming the Lakota people was seen as a peaceful measure, designed to eliminate the tribe’s capacity to launch the violent outbreak. To the Lakota and Big Foot’s followers, the plan appeared to leave them vulnerable to violence. ‘‘For all the Lakota’s obvious displeasure at the disarmament order, neither group seemed prepared for a fight that morning. For their part, the Lakota were not only outnumbered, out-armed, and flying a white flag of truce; they risked placing their families in danger if they launched any violent resistance. Because of the disarmament procedure, the two groups were so close together when the fighting began that most combatants had little time to reload. The initial conflict thus rapidly devolved into a bitter hand-to-hand struggle. Once the soldiers closest to the Indian camp had either fallen or retreated, however, the supporting troopers were able to bring their fire to bear on the camp with deadly effect. Particularly devastating were the four Hotchkiss cannons. Few Lakota warriors had ever encountered this weapon, which could fire almost fifty rounds per minute. In less than an hour, Indian resistance to the troops collapsed.’’
On May 28, 1903, five thousand Lakota’s assembled, coming to dedicate a monument to honor the Minneconjou Lakota Chief Big Foot and more than two hundred of his followers. ‘‘The obelisk emerged from the Lakota’s engagement with the politics of memory—the narrative accepted by the government and dominant society—of ‘the Battle of Wounded Knee’, in compensation claims and in their memorial practices. The Lakota’s monument was a rare intervention by indigenous peoples in a western memorial landscape largely controlled by Euro-Americans. As Edward Tabor Linenthal and Micheal A. Elliot have surmised, Americans erected monuments to honor George Armstrong Custer and other white soldiers killed in the Indian/Indigenous wars. Even when whites killed large numbers of Indigenous, Americans found ways to memorialize massacres as necessary acts that brought peace and progress to the nation, as Karl Jacoby and Ari Kelman have demonstrated. Although army officials have disagreed over exactly what happened at Wounded Knee, the War Department ultimately upheld the Seventh Calvary’s claim that ‘treacherous’ and ‘fanatical’ Ghost Dancers had attacked unsuspecting troops, thereby disavowing any responsibility for the deaths of women and children.’’
This article is written in daily remembrance of the deaths of millions of indigenous or diverse people, and the acts of continuous violence that plagues this country because of bigoted and ignorant people, but especially at the hands of people who claim they are here to protect and serve. These acts were and still are commonplace in American society, and to not write about the horrors in their originality would be pointless, and otherwise claim that they never happened at all.