Wounded Knee

Sioux chief Big Foot and about 350 of his people camped on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek on the morning of December 29, 1890. U.S. troops surrounded their camp. They were charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors.

This is Big Foot.

The Sioux Indian’s lives were destroyed. The buffalo were gone. Themselves were confined to reservations dependent on Indian Agents for their existence. All that changed when in a desperate attempt to return to the days of their glory, many sought salvation in a new mysticism preached by Wovoka, a Paiute Shaman. Emissaries from the Sioux people in South Dakota traveled to Nevada to hear his words. He called his self the Messiah and prophesied that the dead would soon join the kiving in a world where they could live the old way in peace with plenty of game. To hasten the event, the Indians were to dance the Ghost Dance.

This is Wovoka the Paiute Shaman.

This is a tribe dancing the Ghost Dance.

The dancers wore brightly colored shirts with images of eagles and buffalos. They believed that these “Ghost Shirts” would protect them from the bluecoats’ bullets.

This is a "Ghost Shirt" that they wore.

This dance spread through the Sioux villages of the Dakota reservations. It revitalized the Indians and brought fear to the whites. At Pine Ridge a desperate Indian Agent wired his superiors in Washington saying, “Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy… we need protection and we need it now.” The order went out to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation. In the attempt Sitting Bull was killed on December 15. Chief Big Foot was next to come up on the list.

Members of the Miniconjou Sioux (Lakota) tribe led by Chief Big Foot and the Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota) followers of the recently slain charismatic leader, Sitting Bull, attempted to escape arrest by fleeing south through the rugged terrain of the Badlands to seek protection at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Chief Big Foot became ill with pneumonia during the trip and was forced to travel in the back of a wagon.

The band saw four troops of Calvary approaching when they were just reaching Porcupine Creek. The Indians quickly raised a white flag over the chief’s wagon. General Nelson Miles was the commander of the Military Department of the Missouri. He was also in charge of the army in this area, and therefore could be considered the most important single non-Indian source of information on Wounded Knee. When the soldiers and Indians finally met, Big Foot rose from his bed to greet Major Samuel Whitside of the Seventh calvary. His blankets were stained crimson and blood dripped from his nose as he spoke. Whitside gave Big Foot orders to take his band to their camp on Wounded Knee Creek. Big Foot told Whitside that they were headed that way, to Pine Ridge. The major wanted to disarm the Indians instantly, but was talked out of it by his scout, John Shangreau, in order to prevent instigating a fight right then and there. They agreed to wait until they reached camp. Then the major ordered his army ambulance to transport the ill chief and provide him with a warmer and more comfortable ride.

This is Big Foot's band.

Suddenly a shot rang out. Indian Braves scurried to retrieve their weapons as troops fired into the crowd. Men, women, and children scrambled for their lives. Many ran for a ravine next to the camp only to be cut down in a withering cross fire.

After the shooting stopped, approximately three hundred Sioux Indians were dead, Big Foot included. Only twenty-five soldiers lost their lives, thirty-nine more wounded, most by their own shrapnel and bullets. Scattered fighting continued but the massacre at Wounded Knee effectively demolished the Ghost Dance movement and ended the Indian Wars.

This is a picture of the dead bodies.

This is Big Foot frozen in the snow.

This is the massgrave they were buried in.

According to scholars the Wounded Knee Massacre symbolizes not only a clash of cultures and the failure of governmental Indian policies, but also the end of the American frontier. Although it did bring an end to the Ghost Dance religion, it did not, however, represent the demise of the Lakota culture, which still thrives today. The memory of that day still evokes passionate emotional and politicized responses from present-day Native Americans and their supporters.

The massacre at Wounded Knee became a wakeup call for the nation, regarding the lies and deceit of the U.S. Government towards Native Americans. The more land that was promised, the more it was taken away. The mass graves at Wounded Knee became a symbol to the Indians never to forget and never to trust the whites again.

Sitting Bull is reported to have said, “I am the last Indian.” In some ways he was right. The world of the Plains Indians had changed forever during his lifetime. The old life of the buffalo hunters was over. If Sitting Bull’s death marked the end of an age, then Wounded Knee marked the end of a culture.

“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from the high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream…”

-Black Elk-

Chris Cooper
Rossville Jr. High
2002 Plains Project

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