Wounded Knee, South Dakota

Wounded Knee massacre
Part of the Sioux Wars
Miniconjou Chief Big Foot lies dead in the snow
Date December 29, 1890 Location Wounded Knee, South Dakota Result U.S. victory, a massacre
Combatants
Sioux	United States
Commanders
Big Foot†	James W. Forsyth
Strength
120 men 230 women and children	500 men
Casualties
153 killed 50 wounded 150 missing	25 killed 39 wounded

Template:Campaignbox Pine Ridge Campaign

Wounded Knee, South Dakota was the site of two major incidences in the historical conflict between Native Americans and white Americans. The first was the Wounded Knee Massacre, the last major armed conflict between the Dakota Sioux and the United States, subsequently described as a "massacre" by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The second event, commonly known as the Wounded Knee Incident took place in February 1973 when the town was seized and occupied by American Indian militants.

On December 29, 1890, five hundred 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. The commander of the 7th had been ordered to disarm the Lakota before proceeding and placed his men in too close proximity to the Lakota, alarming them. Shooting broke out near the end of the disarmament, and accounts differ regarding who fired first and why.

By the time it was over, 25 troopers and 300 Lakota Sioux lay dead, including men, women, and children. Many of the dead soldiers are believed to have been the victims of "friendly fire" as the shooting took place at point blank range in chaotic conditions, and most of the Lakota had previously been disarmed. Around 150 Lakota are believed to have fled the chaos, of which many likely died from exposure.

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 clearly stated "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 320 acre 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 help 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 sacred Black Hills, which formed part of the assigned land given to the Lakota by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. If the Lakota had sold the Black Hills, this would have allowed whites to mine there legally, but the Lakota were not interested in doing so.

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 they can see their dead relatives in the next life. 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.

Although Ghost Dancing was a spiritual ceremony, the agents may have misinterpreted it as a war dance. 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 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. Devotees were dancing to pitches of excitement that frightened the government employees, setting off a panic among white settlers. Pine Ridge agent Daniel F. Royer then called for military help to restore order and subdue the frenzy among white settlers.

Big Foot

On December 15, an event occurred that set off a chain reaction ending in the massacre at Wounded Knee. 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 Chief 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 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 was not 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.

Battle

On December 29, the Lakota were informed that it was necessary to turn in any weapons they possessed to prevent violence. A search was ordered, which turned up a few weapons. A medicine man called Yellow Bird began to perform the ghost dance, reminding the Lakota that the ghost shirts were bullet-proof. As tension mounted, a scuffle broke out between a soldier trying to disarm a deaf Indian named Black Coyote. He had not heard the order to turn in his gun and assumed he was being charged with theft. At that moment, a firearm discharged, and at the same moment Yellow Bird threw some dust into the air. Indian bystanders said he meant it as a ceremonial gesture but the hairtriggered soldiers took it for a signal to attack. The silence of the morning was broken by the guns echoing near the river bed. At first, the struggle was fought at close range, but when the Indians ran to take cover, the Hotchkiss cannons started shooting and shredding tipis. A few Lakota were able to produce concealed weapons.

By the end of fighting, which lasted less than an hour, 153 Lakota had been killed and 50 wounded. These numbers are under reported, in actuality the Lakota dead numbered as many as 300 or more. In comparison, army casualties numbered 25 dead and 39 wounded. Forsyth was later charged with the killing of innocents but was exonerated.

It is claimed that while the soldiers were firing at the Lakota they were yelling repeatedly “Remember the Little Bighorn,” or “Remember Custer.” After the shooting stopped, U.S army officials gathered up their dead and wounded soldiers, some of whom died later. Some had been caught in friendly crossfire. Soldiers stripped the bodies of the dead Lakota, keeping their ghost shirts and other clothing and equipment as souvenirs.

Aftermath

Mass Grave for the dead natives after massacre of Wounded Knee.

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 died on the field, while at least seven of Lakota were mortally wounded. These numbers are under reported, in actuality the Lakota dead numbered as many as 300 or more.

Colonel Forsyth was immediately denounced by General Nelson Miles and relieved 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—while it did include several cases of personal testimony pointing toward misconduct—was flawed^{[citation needed]}. It was not 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^{[citation needed]}. Ultimately the Secretary of War concurred and reinstated Forsyth to command of the 7th. Testimony before the court indicated that for the most part troopers 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^{[citation needed]}.

The American public's reaction to the battle was at the time 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." 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 in 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 had 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." [1]

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 Indian peoples. It was also responsible for the subsequent severe 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 that resulted in the death of one trooper 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.

Wounded Knee Incident, 1973

File:Bandera AIM.PNG

AIM flag

The Wounded Knee incident began February 27, 1973 when the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota was seized by followers of AIM (the American Indian Movement). The occupiers controlled the town for 71 days while the U.S. Marshals Service laid siege.

Background

Wounded Knee is a town on the Pine Ridge Reservation and home to the Oglala Sioux Indians. The area is historically significant as in 1890 it was the setting for a U.S. military massacre of approximately 146 Native Americans (the number of people killed is imprecise because the military at the time did not count the exact number of deaths). The 1973 incident erupted for many reasons but mainly due to the opposition of the reservation’s president, Richard "Dick" Wilson. Opponents of Wilson accused him of:

• "Mishandling tribal funds"
• Abuse of his authority; AIM cites the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights alleging that Wilson’s election had been "permeated with fraud"
• Using "brute force" for political means such as his private army the GOON’s (Guardians of the Oglala Nation) that AIM labeled as Wilson’s "official terrorist 'goon squad'"

His opponents also unsuccessfully attempted to impeach him in 1973. In fact, over 150 civil rights complaints had been issued against the reservation government in the years prior to the incident. AIM claims they chose Wounded Knee because of its historical significance. They considered the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre "a prime example of the treatment of Indians since the European invasion".

OSCRO (the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization) was an organization on the Pine Ridge Reservation that attempted to change the poor civil conditions. A meeting was held on February 26, 1973 "to openly discuss their grievances concerning the tribal government". Another meeting was held the next day, February 27 and AIM was summoned "for some assistance," by OSCRO to produce "results". Dennis Banks states that it was "the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization which called upon [AIM], and we responded". AIM was a national Indian rights organization largely considered an urban, "red power" movement; the group was led by Dennis Banks and, at Wounded Knee, Russell Means. The government (Nixon administration) was wary of the perceived militant organization. In fact, the Department of Justice requested that the FBI "intensify its efforts in identifying violence-prone individuals" in AIM. Between 200 and 300 AIM members entered the town on February 26. An official, reliable count of AIM members entering or occupying the town was never recorded and would have been difficult to achieve, but AIM claims that approximately 300 members of their organization entered the village while the government estimates 200.

Occupation

On February 27 the AIM and Oglala Sioux (or those opposed Wilson) seized the town of Wounded Knee; the U.S. military and government began their siege of Wounded Knee the same day. It is disputed whether the government forces cordoned the town before, as AIM claims, or after the takeover. According to former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk, "on 25 February 1973 the U.S. Department of Justice sent out 50 U.S. Marshals to the Pine Ridge Reservation to be available in the case of a civil disturbance". AIM, on the other hand, argues that their organization came to the town for an open meeting and "within hours police had set up roadblocks, cordoned off the area and began arresting people leaving town… the people prepared to defend themselves against the government’s aggressions". Regardless, by the morning of February 28, both sides were firmly entrenched.

Both AIM and government documents show that the two sides traded fire for most of the three months. John Sayer, a Wounded Knee chronicler claims that:

"The equipment maintained by the military while in use during the siege included fifteen armored personal carriers, clothing, rifles, grenade launchers, flares, and 133,000 rounds of ammunition, for a total cost, including the use of maintenance personnel from the national guard of five states and pilot and planes for aerial photographs, of over half a million dollars"

The statistics gathered by Record and Hocker largely concur:

"...barricades of paramilitary personnel armed with automatic weapons, snipers, helicopters, armored personnel carriers equipped with .50-caliber machine guns, and more than 130,000 rounds of ammunition".

The precise statistics of U.S. government force at Wounded Knee vary, but all accounts agree that it was certainly a significant military force including "federal marshals, FBI agents, and armored vehicles." One eye witness and journalist chronicled, "sniper fire from…federal helicopters," "bullets dancing around in the dirt" and "sounds of shooting all over town" [from both sides]. AIM claims in its chronology of the occupation that "the government tried starving out the [occupants]" and that they, the occupiers, smuggled food and medical supplies in past roadblocks "set up by Dick Wilson and tacitly supported by the government".

In the course of the conflict, Frank Clearwater, a Wounded Knee occupier, was shot in the head while asleep on April 17 and died on April 25. Lawrence Lamont, also an occupier, received a fatal gunshot wound on April 26, and U.S. Marshal Lloyd Grimm was paralyzed from the waist down again by a gunshot wound.

Both sides reached an agreement on May 5 to disarm. By May 8 the siege had ended and the town was evacuated after 71 days of occupation; the government then took control of the village.

AIM conspiracy and abuse allegations

AIM alleges that the United States government restricted their freedom of press and thus tried to manipulate the media to an anti-AIM position. AIM claims "communications were cut for over a month and the press was prevented from first-hand information" and that their "freedom of press was obstructed throughout the liberation". AIM documents also claim that after the U.S. government forces seized the town of Wounded Knee, they "caused massive destruction of personal property and homes".

Possible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peltier

Further reading

• Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Owl Books (1970). ISBN 0-8050-6669-1.
• Coleman, William S.E. Voices of Wounded Knee, University of Nebraska Press (2000). ISBN 0-8032-1506-1.
• Smith, Rex Alan. Moon of Popping Trees, University of Nebraska Press (1981). ISBN 0-8032-9120-5.
• Utley, Robert M. Last Days of the Sioux Nation, Yale University Press (1963).
• Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier 1846-1890, University of New Mexico Press (2003). ISBN 0-8263-2998-5.
• Utley, Robert M. Frontier Regulars The United States Army and the Indian 1866-1891, MacMillan Publishing (1973).
• Yenne, Bill. Indian Wars: The Campaign for the American West, Westholme (2005). ISBN 1-59416-016-3.
• Champlin, Tim. A Trail To Wounded Knee : A Western Story, Five Star (2001). ISBN 0-7826-2401-0

External links

All Links Retrieved December 10, 2007.

• The Wounded Knee Museum in Wall, South Dakota
• Read a review of HBO's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
• Bureau of American Ethnology report on the Ghost Dance Religion
• Editorials by L. Frank Baum
• History of the Ghost Dance Religion
• PBS biography of Jack Wilson
• Walter Mason camp collection includes photographs from the Wounded Knee Massacre
• The Lost Bird of Wounded Knee (1890-1920)
• US Army Casuality list of Wounded Knee

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