200 Lakota Fall: Wounded Knee Massacre

Soldiers of the U.S. 7th Cavalry opened fire on a camp of disarmed Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890, killing more than 200 people in the worst massacre of Native Americans by the United States military. Four Hotchkiss mountain guns positioned on a rise above the encampment poured explosive shells into the tipis at a rate of nearly fifty rounds per minute, shredding everything in their path. The 7th Cavalry had intercepted a band of roughly 350 Miniconjou Lakota under Chief Spotted Elk, known to the Army as Big Foot, the day before on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Spotted Elk was ill with pneumonia and traveling under a white flag, but the Army suspected his band of involvement in the Ghost Dance movement, a spiritual practice that promised the return of the buffalo and the dead ancestors and the disappearance of white settlers. The military viewed the Ghost Dance as an incitement to insurrection, though most participants understood it as a prayer for deliverance. On the morning of December 29, soldiers entered the camp to confiscate weapons. A scuffle broke out when a deaf Lakota man named Black Coyote resisted surrendering his rifle. A shot was fired, and within seconds the soldiers surrounding the camp opened up from all sides. Warriors who still possessed hidden weapons fought back briefly, but the Hotchkiss guns made resistance futile. Cavalrymen pursued fleeing women and children for miles across the frozen prairie, shooting many in the back. Bodies were found up to two miles from the camp. Twenty soldiers received the Medal of Honor. The dead Lakota were left on the ground for three days during a blizzard, then buried in a mass grave by a civilian crew paid two dollars per body. The massacre effectively ended armed Native resistance on the Great Plains. The National Congress of American Indians has repeatedly demanded the medals be rescinded; they have not been.