The history of conflict between white settlers in the country that became the United States and the Indigenous people that occupied the land began almost as soon as immigrants began arriving on the east coast of the North American continent. As the centuries progressed and the new population spread westward and evolved, Native Americans were transferred and pushed, escalating tensions to war, especially in the second half of the 19th century. As the 1800s drew to a close, the US army delivered an appalling blow to the Lakota people in South Dakota: the Wounded Knee Massacre, resulting in the heartbreaking conclusion of large-scale Indigenous resistance in the country.
“A Dream Died There…”
Oglala Lakota leader and shaman Black Elk wasn’t present when US soldiers massacred his people at Wounded Knee, but arrived in the aftermath. Later, in reporting what he’d seen, he talked about what had been lost there in addition to dozens of lives: “A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream…the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead” (Brown, 1970). Black Elk’s words eloquently summarize what Wounded Knee meant to the first peoples of America—their resistance had been toppled and broken. Thousands now found themselves at the mercy of the very same government that had made every effort to exterminate them.
The leadup to the events at Wounded Knee had begun centuries earlier. As European explorers began visiting the eastern coast of the continent, they invariably encountered Native Americans. While some interactions were peaceful, others were dangerous. The first permanent settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, followed a similar pattern of an up-and-down relationship. Tensions often erupted when settlers attempted to exact rules of land or resource ownership that were simply unheard of in local Indigenous cultures. Maltreatment in both directions worsened progress, sometimes leading to warfare. Notably, in 1675, King Philip’s War erupted in New England, a stand by local tribes to stop English incursion into their lands. Unfortunately, this would become a repeating pattern as Americans perpetrated the idea of Manifest Destiny as the centuries progressed.
Under government order and military action, the majority of Native Americans, except those who chose to assimilate, were eliminated from the Eastern United States by the early 1830s. Forcibly removed westward, a tenuous lull soon burst into more conflict as American pioneers decided that they, too, wanted to take advantage of the opportunities that the West might have to offer. Wagon trains and the Transcontinental Railroad offered the ability for settlers to continue moving, and Native Americans were running out of free space. Their former homelands were becoming towns and farms, and gold miners overran their sacred spots. The US government and military worked to confine Indigenous people to reservation lands and convert them to an agrarian lifestyle that would integrate them into white society.
Making a Stand
Resistance was common, and one of the greatest stands was made by the Lakota people (known to some as the Sioux) of the plains along with allied tribes, including the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Just after the Civil War, Red Cloud’s War was initiated as the Lakota resisted travelers moving through their homelands, disrupting their way of life in Montana and Wyoming. The war, which lasted until 1868, included the Fetterman Fight, in which Crazy Horse’s contingency snuffed out braggart Captain William Judd Fetterman, who’d once boasted that he could “ride through the Sioux nation with eighty men.” Fetterman’s contingent of 80 men died with him. Red Cloud’s War concluded with the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The treaty included stipulations that the US army abandon area forts and that settlers be re-routed. It was one of the few moments in which the Indigenous tribes won concessions from the US government.
Unfortunately, the success of the Lakota would be short-lived. After gold was discovered in their sacred land, the Black Hills, in 1874, the treaty stipulations were ignored by the United States. Reservation lands were offered to the Lakota and largely refused, leading to the Battle of Little Bighorn, or the Greasy Grass, in 1876. Though the battle resulted in the death of the iconic George Armstrong Custer, it would be the last major victory for the resisting tribes. The solid defeat ignited a new fierceness in the United States military. The colonizers doubled down on the genocide of the American Indians, and slowly, great leaders were brought to subjugation. The decimation of the bison herds and other resources contributed to the surrender of increasingly smaller bands of once-fierce warriors and their families.
The Ghost Dance Arrives
The Indigenous cause had a burst of re-awakening with the spread of the Ghost Dance beginning in 1899. This spiritual movement involved a traditional round dance and included a prophecy that adherence to these principles would result in the erasure of white culture from the land. Though peaceful in its execution, the Ghost Dance movement raised suspicions anew among the reservation agents and other US authorities. These increasing suspicions led to the murder of Sitting Bull in 1890 (Brown, 438), and many groups left the reservations to form Ghost Dance camps where they could practice unmolested.
Big Foot, also known as Spotted Elk, was the leader of one of these groups, taking his Minneconjou Lakota off the reservation. They were soon joined by about 100 of Sitting Bull’s followers, Hunkpapa Lakota, who had fled the reservation when their leader was struck down. The War Department soon issued orders for the 70-year-old leader’s arrest, calling him a “fomenter of disturbances” (Brown, 440). With the arrival of the Hunkpapa and learning of Sitting Bull’s demise, Big Foot steered his people towards the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of Red Cloud. It was his hope that Red Cloud would offer his people protection against the US officials (Brown, 440).
Massacre at Wounded Knee
Big Foot did not plan his journey to Pine Ridge with malice and battle in mind. It was December, and the chief dressed for the weather, some stating that he looked more like an “impoverished farmhand” than a great chief (Cozzens, 445). To add to the strain of the trip, Big Foot was becoming ill with pneumonia. As the trip progressed, he had to be carried in a wagon, where he coughed up blood, and his people became increasingly concerned for his health.
The group encountered the Seventh Cavalry on December 28 as they journeyed. Major Samuel Whitside and his men were armed with Hotchkiss guns in addition to their individual arms (Cozzens, 446). Whitside met with Big Foot, indicating that he needed to take the Chief in. Big Foot explained that his people were heading into the agency anyway and offered no resistance but refused to turn over the weapons that the group, largely women, children, and the elderly, had in tow (Cozzens, 447). Big Foot was transferred to an army ambulance (Brown, 440), and the now conjoined party continued forward on the path to Pine Ridge until dusk when camp was established along Wounded Knee Creek. The army officers counted the group, concluding that there were 120 men of varying ages, as well as 230 women and children (Brown, 441). The Hotchkiss guns were mounted on a slope above the camp as everyone prepared for a fitful sleep.
The following morning, the army officials attempted once again to disarm the group. One man, Black Coyote, who happened to be deaf (Brown, 442), refused to hand over his rifle, yelling that he had paid a great deal for it. Soldiers converged on Black Coyote, and in the confusion, a gun went off. “Fast, like prairie fire,” according to First Sergeant Theodore Ragnar (Cozzens, 453), came a reply.
Though who shot first is a mystery, the few remaining Indigenous guns in the camp fired at the soldiers, who were shooting just as furiously in response. Escalating the Wounded Knee tragedy was the slaughter of noncombatants as the chaos grew. The Hotchkiss guns were turned on the camp, and in 20 minutes (Cozzens, 457), the camp lay silent and blackened. Estimates of the dead vary widely, from 150 to 300 of Big Foot’s group of 350 (Brown, 444), including the chief himself. 25 of the soldiers were killed. With an approaching blizzard, the dead were left in the gulch; bodies twisted and frozen where they had fallen (Brown, 445) until a burial party was able to return.
The End of an Era
Wounded Knee left an unmatched legacy in the United States. The dream of preserving the Native American way of life had, in Black Elk’s words, died there. Though the massacre seemed to signal the conclusion of the Indigenous peoples’ ability to effectively resist the United States, that idea is not completely true.
The United States’ first peoples were largely confined to a corrupt reservation system that would continue to breed smaller-scale protests from leaders like Red Cloud. Bucking the system, people from dozens of tribes made efforts to preserve their spiritual and cultural traditions, languages, and regions amid forced reconciliation.
The events at Wounded Knee served as inspiration decades later for groups such as the American Indian Movement (AIM), who staged a 71-day occupation of the area in 1973 in protest of the way that the US government continued to dishonor treaties and corrupt tribal leadership. While Wounded Knee may be simply a page in the history books to some, it is a reminder to others of the failings of the United States in its treatment of its Indigenous people and a motivation to continue to fight for their cultural survival.
Recommended Reading:
Brown, Dee (1970). Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Henry Holt & Company
Cozzens, Peter (2016). The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West. New York: Vintage Books.
