The Truth About the Wounded Knee Massacre--Dec 29 1890
The Truth About the Wounded Knee Massacre
Chief Big Foot (Spotted Elk) lies lifeless in the snow near Wounded Knee Creek following the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890. One hundred and twenty-five years following the Wounded Knee Massacre of December 29, 1890, indigenous peoples continue to heal.
Why was deadly force used at Wounded Knee?
Patti Jo King • December 30, 2016
In 1889, the pronouncements of Paiute mystic Wovoka sparked hope of the dawning of a new age among Western tribes; an age that promised an end to Euro-American oppression and a return to tribal autonomy, abundance and spiritual renewal. According to Wovoka, deliverance required participation in a regime of ritual dance and prayer. As word of his Ghost Dance Revival spread, a Lakota delegation visited him, and then carried the Ghost Dance back to their respective reservations. On the morning of December 29, 1890, Chief Spotted Elk (Big Foot), leader of a band of some 350 Minneconjou Sioux, sat in a makeshift camp along the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The band was surrounded by U.S. troops sent to arrest him and disarm his followers. The atmosphere was tense, since an order to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation just 14 days earlier had resulted in his murder, prompting Big Foot to lead his people to the Pine Ridge Agency for safe haven. Alerted to the band’s Ghost Dance activities, General Nelson Miles commanded Major Samuel Whiteside and the Seventh Cavalry to apprehend Big Foot and his followers, and the regiment intercepted them on December 28, leading them to the edge of the creek. While confiscating their weapons, a shot pierced the brisk morning air. Within seconds the charged atmosphere erupted as the Indian men rushed to retrieve their confiscated rifles and troopers began to fire volley after volley into the Sioux camp. From a hill above, a Hotchkiss machine gun raked the tipis, gun smoke filled the air, and men, women, and children ran for a ravine near the camp, only to be cut down in crossfire. More than 200 Lakota lay dead or dying in the aftermath as well as at least 20 soldiers.
The caption says: Famous Battery “E” of 1st Artillery. These brave men and the Hotchkiss gun that Big Foot’s Indians thought were toys, together with the fighting 7th what’s left of Gen. Custer’s boys, sent 200 Indians to that Heaven which the ghost dancer enjoys. This checked the Indian noise and Gen. Miles with staff returned to Illinois. (J.C.H. Grabill/Library of Congress)
Although the story of the Wounded Knee Massacre is well-known, its causes and effects are still an enigma 125 years later. For 19th century Americans, it represented the end of Indian resistance and the conquest of the West. For Indians, it represented the utter disregard of the U.S. toward its treaty responsibilities, its duplicity, and its cruelty toward Native people. In the 20th century and beyond, Wounded Knee continues to fuel controversy and debate over the impetus and intent of the government that day, the role of the military, and the conflicting ways the tragedy is remembered today.
Extermination Policy Debate
Dance, a significant aspect of Native cultural expression, has always played a vital role in both utilitarian and religious ritual and ceremony. In the push west in the years after the Civil War, however, Americans viewed Indian dancing as a threat. Fearing an orchestrated Indian uprising, by the 1870s, both the U.S. and Canada had enacted laws banning the performance of cultural or religious rituals, including dancing. Some 19 years later, General Nelson Miles, assigned to investigate the Ghost Dance phenomenon among the Plains tribes, issued a warning that if the practice was not stopped, it could lead to an all-out Indian war. In response, the War Department deployed 7,000 troops to maintain control over the Lakota.
One of the most hotly debated topics among historians today is why deadly military force was used against the tribes to enforce the ban on dancing and whether that force was a byproduct of war or the result of premeditated murder or genocide. Some scholars are working to rewrite the long-accepted version of the frontier wars as advanced by scholars such as Robert Utley, who in his 1963 book The Last Days of the Sioux Nation, called the massacre “a regrettable, tragic accident of war… for which neither side as a whole may be properly condemned.
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https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/the-truth-about-the-wounded-knee-massacre/
