The Wounded Knee

From the top, the Hotchkiss guns (funny name eh?), the dead in mass graves, Big foot, n the baby that survived the massacre.

The Wounded Knee Massacre

White officials became alarmed at the religious fervor and activism and in December 1890 banned the Ghost Dance on Lakota reservations.When the rites continued, officials called in troops to Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. The military, led by veteran General Nelson Miles, geared itself for another campaign.

The presence of the troops exacerbated the situation. Short Bull and Kicking Bear led their followers to the northwest corner of the Pine Ridge reservation, to a sheltered escarpment known as the Stronghold. The dancers sent word to Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas to join them. Before he could set out from the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, however, he was arrested by Indian police. A scuffle ensued in which Sitting Bull and seven of his warriors were slain. Six of the policemen were killed.

General Miles had also ordered the arrest of Big Foot, who had been known to live along the Cheyenne River in South Dakota. But, Big Foot and his followers had already departed south to Pine Ridge, asked there by Red Cloud and other supporters of the whites, in an effort to bring tranquility. Miles sent out the infamous Seventh Calvary led by Major Whitside to locate the renegades. They scoured the Badlands and finally found the Miniconjou dancers on Porcupine Creek, 30 miles east of Pine Ridge. The Indians offered no resistance. Big Foot, ill with pneumonia, rode in a wagon. The soldiers ordered the Indians to set up camp five miles westward, at Wounded Knee Creek. Colonel James Forsyth arrived to take command and ordered his guards to place four Hotchkiss cannons in position around the camp. The soldiers now numbered around 500; the Indians 350, all but 120 of these women and children.

The following morning, December 29, 1890, the soldiers entered the camp demanding the all Indian firearms be relinquished. A medicine man named Yellow Bird advocated resistance, claiming the Ghost Shirts would protect them. One of the soldiers tried to disarm a deaf Indian named Black Coyote. A scuffle ensued and the firearm discharged. The silence of the morning was broken and soon other guns echoed in the river bed. At first, the struggle was fought at close quarters, but when the Indians ran to take cover, the Hotchkiss artillery opened up on them, cutting down men, women, children alike, the sick Big Foot among them. By the end of this brutal, unnecessary violence, which lasted less than an hour, at least 150 Indians had been killed and 50 wounded. In comparison, army casualties were 25 killed and 39 wounded. Forsyth was later charged with killing the innocents, but exonerated.

According 2 Wikipedia.org
Prelude
Map of Wounded Knee

In February 1890, the United States government broke the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota, an area that formerly encompassed the majority of the state, into five smaller reservations.[5] This was done to accommodate homesteaders from the east. It also carried out the government’s policy of "breaking up tribal relationships"[6] and "conforming Indians to the white man’s ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must".[6] Once on the half-sized reservations, tribes were separated into family units on 320-acre (1.3 km2) plots, forced to farm, raise livestock, and send their children to boarding schools that forbade inclusion of traditional Native American culture and language.

To support the Sioux during the period of transition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was responsible for supplying the Sioux with food (they were traditionally a hunter-gatherer society) and hiring White American 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.
US officers at scene of Wounded Knee, Buffalo Bill, Capt. Baldwin, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Capt. Moss, and others, on horseback

This, however, was when government officials’ patience with supporting the so-called “lazy Indians" ran out. They cut rations to the Sioux in half. As American bison had been nearly eradicated from the North American Plains a few years earlier, the Sioux began to starve. Tribal members turned to spiritual revival, and many performed the Ghost Dance religious ceremony. Supervising agents of the BIA were alarmed at the activity. They requested and were granted thousands more troops deployed to the reservation.[7]
A reenactment of the US troops surrounding the Lakota at Wounded Knee. The photograph shows the Lakota encampment in the foreground with a short line of US troops in the background. Taken 1913/11/10

The Lakota were overwhelmed by the flood of settlers onto their lands. A gold rush in the 1870s 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, but the Lakota were not interested in selling 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; Native Americans found off the reservation were to be returned by force. By 1889, the situation on the reservations was getting desperate. After reducing their land area, the US failed to honor its promise to increase the amount of food and other necessities for the Lakotas' survival.

[edit] Ghost Dance

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Main article: Ghost Dance
Wovoka – Paiute spiritual leader and creator of the Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dance was a form of circle or spirit dancing which, according to contemporary anthropologist James Mooney, had existed for centuries. It is a religious ceremony that participants believe would allow their dead relatives to come back, and that the world will be restored. In some places that restoration included the removal of all white people from their lands. 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 because of Wovoka's message. The movement spread to the Plains and beyond. All tribes adopted Wovoka's advice against violence with the exception of the Sioux.

Ghost Dancing was a spiritual ceremony, however, some US Indian agents for other tribes misinterpreted it as a war dance. The Sioux danced in part because of their antagonism to the whites and believed it was a preparation for war. This was distant from the pacifistic teachings of the Pauite prophet Wovoka (Utley, p. 73). Fearing that the Ghost Dance philosophy signaled an Indian uprising, many agents outlawed it.

On November 15, 1890,[8] believing that a renewal of the earth would take place in the coming spring, the Lakota of Pine Ridge and Rosebud defied their agent, Daniel F. Royer, whom they called Young-Man-Afraid-of-Indians due to his inexperience, 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). Royer interpreted their dance as a threat and immediately contacted the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.[8] Within 5 days, armed U.S. troops arrived with heavy artillery that sent the Ghost Dancers into a panic and they quickly retreated back to the Pine Ridge Reservation where they continued to dance.[8] 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. "[T]he Sioux apostles had perverted Wovoka's doctrine into a militant crusade against the white man." (Utley, p. 87) White settlers became panicked. Pine Ridge agent Daniel F. Royer called for military help to restore order with the Indians and calm white settlers.
[edit] Spotted Elk
Spotted Elk, (Heȟáka Glešká {Cheyenne} or Hoh-pong-ge-le-skah {Lakota}) who later became known as 'Big Foot' or 'Si Tȟaŋka' in a 1872 portrait taken while part of a Dakota delegation visiting Washington D.C.
Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou Sioux in costume at a dance Cheyenne River, South Dakota, 08/09/1890

On December 15, 1890, 40 Indian policeman arrived at Chief Sitting Bull's camp, prepared to follow orders to arrest him after he threatened to join the Ghost Dancers in protest to reservation life.[8] Crowds gathered to protest the arrest, and the first shot was fired when Sitting Bull tried to pull away from his captors,[8] killing the officer who had been holding him. Shots broke out and by the end Sitting Bull, along with eight other Native Americans and six policeman were dead.[8] After Sitting Bull's death, refugees from his 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,[verification needed] General Nelson A. Miles ordered him to move his people to a nearby fort.

On December 28, 1890, Spotted Elk became seriously ill with pneumonia. The tribe set off to seek shelter with Red Cloud at Pine Ridge reservation. On December 29 Big Foot’s band was intercepted by Major Samuel Whitside and his battalion of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment. Ill with pneumonia, Spotted Elk surrendered peacefully and the cavalry took him and his band into custody. They were escorted five miles (8 km) westward to a site near Wounded Knee Creek, where they were to set up camp. The campsite was already established with a store and several log houses. 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. There were 350 Native Americans; all but 120 were women and children.

[edit] The Massacre

On December 28, 1890 Chief Spotted Elk (later to be known as "Big Foot") of the Miniconjojou Sioux nation, and 350 of his followers were intercepted by James W. Forsyth and a squadron of the 7th Cavalry Regiment as they camped along Wounded Knee Creek. The Indians were on their way to the Pine Ridge Reservation, in hopes of persuading the warriors at Stronghold to surrender.[9] During the night, more soldiers arrived at the camp and began to set up their artillery; four powerful Hotchkiss guns capable of rapid fire were placed along the South and West hills surrounding Spotted Elk's camp.[10]

At daybreak on December 29, 1890, Colonel Forsyth ordered the surrender of weapons and the immediate removal and transportation of the Indians from the "zone of military operations" to awaiting trains. Angered by the demands of the troops, Yellow Bird (tribal medicine man) began dancing and urged his people to put on their sacred shirts and defy the demands of the troops. At that moment Black Coyote, a young warrior, raised his gun in protest, shouting that he had paid money for his weapon and was not going to just give it to anyone.

Forsyth's troops surrounded Black Coyote to disarm him and a struggle ensued. During the struggle Black Coyote's firearm rang out. With the sounding of gun shots, the troops began shooting at the Indians, many of whom were unarmed.[11]
Birds-eye view of canyon at Wounded Knee, Dead horses and Lakota bodies are visible.

At first, the struggle was fought at close range; fully half the Indian men were killed or wounded before they had a chance to get off any shots. Some of the Indians grabbed rifles they had been hiding for self-defense and opened fire on the soldiers. With no cover, and with many of the Sioux unarmed, this phase of the fighting lasted a few minutes at most. While the Indian warriors and soldiers were shooting it out at close range, other soldiers used the Hotchkiss guns against the tipi camp full of women and children. It is believed that many of the troops on the battlefield were victims of friendly fire from their own Hotchkiss guns. The Indian women and children fled the camp, seeking shelter in a nearby ravine from the crossfire.[12] The officers had lost all control of their men. Some of the soldiers fanned out to run across the battlefield and finish off wounded Indians. Others leaped onto their horses and pursued the Lakota (men, women and children), in some cases for miles across the prairies. By the end of the 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 of what triggered the fight are debated, with the above being a summary from multiple accounts. 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 bulletproof. As tension mounted, Black Coyote refused to give up his rifle. He was deaf and had not understood the order. Another Indian said: "Black Coyote is deaf." (He did not speak English). When the soldier refused to heed his warning, he said "Stop! He cannot hear your orders!" At that moment, two soldiers seized Black Coyote from behind, and in the struggle (it is believed but not necessarily accurate that), his rifle discharged. At the 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 and did damage; however, a massive volley was returned back at the tribe.[13]

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 Spotted Elk, and a large number of women and children who tried to escape by running and scattering over the prairie were hunted down and killed."[14] 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. They were gathered up and placed in a common grave. It was reported that four infants were found 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 Lakota were mortally wounded.

[edit] Spotted Elk's Death

Faced with the threat of starvation, the Ghost Dancers began to return to their agencies in late December.[15] Chief Spotted Elk's band was now made up of nearly 400 cold and hungry people. Nearby, troops of the Seventh Calvary found some of the Ghost Dancers and escorted them to Wounded Knee Creek to spend the night. The night before the ‘Wounded Knee Massacre', Colonel James Forsyth had arrived at Wounded Knee Creek, and had ordered his men to place four Hotchkiss cannons in position around the area in which the Indians had been forced to camp. Despite their cooperation, the Indians were disarmed in the morning. They were surrounded by 500 U.S. soldiers, and had no choice but to surrender their weapons. However, the soldiers met resistance from one, Black Coyote (He was Deaf), who was hesitant to relinquish his gun. As they struggled to take it from him, the gun was accidentally fired and on December 29, 1890, what has become known as the ‘Wounded Knee Massacre’ took place. Following the firing of the first shot, many Indians retrieved their guns and began firing at the soldiers. While the soldiers fired back with cannons and explosives, the Indians attacked with knives and tomahawks, but their weapons were no match for the soldiers' heavy artillery. The end result was the massacre of at least 150 Indian men, women and children, Spotted Elk being among one of the killed, as well as 25 officers dead and 40 wounded.

The accidental firing by the Native Americans is open to criticism. One account by Phillip Wells, a mixed-blood Sioux who was an interpreter for the Army, claims that the incident was started by a medicine man. A meeting took place on December 29, 1890 between Colonel Forsyth and Spotted Elk. At the meeting Colonel Forsyth demanded that the Native Americans turn over their weapons. Spotted Elk claimed that they had no weapons. At this point a medicine man commenced to perform the Ghost Dance, during which he encouraged the young warriors, saying that the soldier's bullets would not harm them, and they would turn to dust. After the medicine man had completed his dance, a gun was discovered under a blanket of one of the Native Americans. The gun was confiscated by a cavalry sergeant. After Phillip Wells told the Indians that is was important that they be searched individually, five warriors cast off their blankets, revealing guns. One warrior fired his weapon into a group of soldiers who were told to return fire. The medicine man then proceeded to stab Phillip Wells, nearly slicing off his nose.[16]
[edit] Burial of the Victims
Wounded Knee grave, 2003

Following the Massacre that day, U.S. soldiers left the wounded Native Americans to die in a three day blizzard.[17] They later hired civilians to remove the bodies and bury them in a mass grave:

"Then still frozen stiff, the bodies were dumped unceremoniously into the hole..."[17]

It was said that some of the Americans stripped the corpses of their clothing and collected some of their personal items as mementos of the occasion. Following the burial, the Americans lined up and took their picture beside the mass grave and twenty medals of honor were later given to honor the U.S. soldiers who participated in the massacre.

In 1903, a monument was erected at the site of the mass grave by surviving relatives to honor the "many innocent women and children who knew no wrong..."[17] who were killed in the massacre. Today, some family members are still seeking compensation from the U.S. government as heirs of the victims but they have been unsuccessful in receiving any monetary settlement so far.

Beginning in 1986, a group began the Big Foot Memorial Riders to continue to honor the victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre, specifically Chief Spotted Elk.[17] This ceremony has grown increasingly larger every year since then, and riders subject themselves to the cold weather, as well as the lack of food and water that their family members faced. They carry with them a white flag to symbolize their hope for world peace and to continue to honor and remember the victims so that they will not be forgotten.
[edit] Aftermath

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"Return of Casey's scouts from the fight at Wounded Knee, 1890–91. "Returning from Wounded Knee.

General Nelson Miles denounced Colonel Forsyth and relieved him of command. An exhaustive Army Court of Inquiry convened by Miles criticized Forsyth for his tactical dispositions but otherwise exonerated him of responsibility. The Court of Inquiry, however, was not conducted as a formal court-martial. Without the legal boundaries of that format, several of the witnesses minimized their statements to protect themselves or peers.[citation needed] The Secretary of War concurred with the decision and reinstated Forsyth to command of the 7th Cavalry. Testimony 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. Miles promoted the conclusion that Wounded Knee was a deliberate massacre rather than a tragedy caused by poor decisions.[18]

The American public's reaction to the battle at the time was generally favorable. The Army awarded twenty Medals of Honor, its highest award, for the action. When the awards were reviewed a decade later, Miles supported them.[citation needed]
Portrait of General L. W. Colby of Nebraska State Troops Holding Baby Girl, Zintkala Nuni (Little Lost Bird), Found On Wounded Knee Battlefield, South Dakota, 1890.

In the 21st century, Native American activists have urged the medals be withdrawn, as they say they were "Medals of DIS-Honor". According to Lakota tribesman William Thunder Hawk, "The Medal of Honor is meant to reward soldiers who act heroically. But at Wounded Knee, they didn't show heroism; they showed cruelty." In 2001, the National Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions that condemned the Medals of Honor awards and called on the U.S. government to rescind them.[19]

It is to be noted that one Medal of Honor was awarded to a commander who did not return fire when fired upon by women and children who were armed.

Historian Will G. Robinson noted that in contrast, only three Medals of Honor were awarded to men among the 64,000 South Dakotans who fought for four years of the Second World War.[20]

Many non-Lakota living near the reservations interpreted the battle as the defeat of a murderous cult; others confused Ghost Dancers with Native Americans in general. In an editorial response to the event, the young newspaper editor L. Frank Baum, later 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 had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable 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.[21]

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

[edit] Skirmish at Drexel Mission

Historically, Wounded Knee is generally considered to be the end of the collective multi-century series of conflicts between colonial and U.S. forces and American Indians, known collectively as the Indian Wars. It led to a dramatic decline in the Ghost Dance movement; however, it was not 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. One soldier died and six were wounded from K Troop, 7th Cavalry. Lakota casualties were not recorded. After news of Wounded Knee reached them, Lakota Ghost Dancers from bands which had surrendered, fled, burning several buildings at the mission as they left. They ambushed a squadron of the 7th Cavalry that responded to the incident and pinned it down until a relief force from the 9th Cavalry arrived. The 9th 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. The Drexel Mission skirmish is often overlooked.

Taken from http://www.lastoftheindependents.com/wounded.htm n http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre