Wounded Knee Massacre

The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, involved nearly three hundred Lakota people killed by soldiers of the United States Army. The massacre, part of what the U.S. military called the Pine Ridge Campaign, occurred on December 29, 1890. More than 250 people of the Lakota were killed and 51 wounded (4 men and 47 women and children, some of whom died later). Some estimates placed the number of dead as high as 300.

Would an alien outsider judge America's performance by My Lai and Wounded Knee or by Lincoln and Jefferson? ~ Gregory Benford

Quotes

Brothers, (left to right) White Lance, Joseph Horn Cloud, and Dewey Beard, Wounded Knee survivors; Miniconjou Lakota

"What's left of Big Foot's band": John Grabill, 1891

• Would an alien outsider judge America's performance by My Lai and Wounded Knee or by Lincoln and Jefferson?
  • Gregory Benford, in The Sunborn (2005), Part II, Chapter 10, "Houseguest", p. 149

• Suddenly, I heard a single shot from the direction of the troops. Then three or four. A few more. And immediately, a volley. At once came a general rattle of rifle firing then the Hotchkiss guns.
  • Series Prologue "Wounded Knee Legacy & the Ancestors." 500 Nations, episode 1, The 500 Nations Encore Venture, 1994. Thomas Tibbles (1840–1928), journalist
• [T]hen many Indians broke into the ravine; some ran up the ravine and to favorable positions for defense.
  • Eli Seavey Ricker, Voices of the American West: The Indian interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 1903–1919 |Dewey Beard (Iron Hail, 1862–1955), Minneconjou Lakota survivor, as told to Eli S. Ricker}}
• I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this 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. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
  • Black Elk, John Gneisenau Neihardt (2008). Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. SUNY Press. p. 281. ISBN 9781438425405. Retrieved on November 12, 2015.  Black Elk (1863–1950), medicine man, Oglala Lakota
• There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce ... A mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing ... The women as they were fleeing with their babies were killed together, shot right through ... and after most all of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys ... came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there.
  • Lakota Accounts of the Massacre at Wounded Knee. pbs.org (2000). American Horse (1840–1908), chief, Oglala Lakota
• I know the men did not aim deliberately and they were greatly excited. I don't believe they saw their sights. They fired rapidly but it seemed to me only a few seconds till there was not a living thing before us; warriors, squaws, children, ponies, and dogs ... went down before that unaimed fire.
  • Edward S. Godfrey, "Cavalry Fire Discipline," Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 19 (1896): 259.
  • William S. E. Coleman, Voices of Wounded Knee, p. 278 Edward S. Godfrey, captain, commanded Co. D of the 7th Cavalry (Godfrey was a lieutenant in Captain Benteen's force during the Battle of the Little Bighorn)
• General Nelson A. Miles who visited the scene of carnage, following a three-day blizzard, estimated that around 300 snow shrouded forms were strewn over the countryside. He also discovered to his horror that helpless children and women with babies in their arms had been chased as far as two miles from the original scene of encounter and cut down without mercy by the troopers. ... Judging by the slaughter on the battlefield it was suggested that the soldiers simply went berserk. For who could explain such a merciless disregard for life? ... As I see it the battle was more or less a matter of spontaneous combustion, sparked by mutual distrust.
  • Hugh McGinnis, "I Took Part In The Wounded Knee Massacre" Archived July 23, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, Real West Magazine, January 1966; at Our Family History Website Hugh McGinnis, First Battalion, Co. K, 7th Cavalry
• The whole trouble originated through interested whites, who had gone about most industriously and misrepresented the army and its movements upon all the agencies. The Indians, were in consequence alarmed and suspicious. They had been led to believe that the true aim of the military was their extermination. The troops acted with the greatest kindness and prudence. In the Wounded Knee fight the Indians fired first. The troops fired only when compelled to. I was between both, saw all, and know from an absolute knowledge of the whole affair whereof I say.
  • Craft, Father Francis, ‘’Exonerates Troops: Father Craft Corrects a Number of False Reports’’ Archived February 13, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, Saint Paul Daily Globe, St Paul, Minnesota, January 15, 1891. Available through Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress.
  • Father Francis M. J. Craft – Missionary Wounded in Battle. Army at Wounded Knee (February 14, 2014). The Reverend Father Francis M.J. Craft, Catholic missionary