Wounded Knee: The Massacre of 150 Native Americans by US Troops - Research Paper

Introduction

Wounded Knee is a Creek in the southwestern South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This site witnesses many conflicts involving the representatives of the United States government and the North American Indians. The most stand out conflict was the 1890 massacre that left about 150 Native Americans died due to a 71-days clash between the Sioux and the federal troops. Many of the conflicts in Wounded Knee were caused by mistreatment and discrimination by the expansionist United States (HISTORY 1). Although the clash is regarded as the battle, this perspective fails to recognize the massacre that happened during the 71 days of protesting conditions on the reservation (HISTORY 1). The Wounded Knee massacre sought to bring to an end the Indian wars on the 19th century, the events that happened during the clash left many scars among the American Indians. Even after signing treaties to reduce mistreatment and discriminates, these treaties were not honored and as a result, led to the uprising of many movements such as the Ghost Dance Movement and later on the American Indian Movement in 1968 (HISTORY 2).

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This paper focus on the Wounded Knee Massacre and how events that happened before, during, and after the massacre have caused movements such as the American Indian Movement around America. It discusses the Wounded Knee massacre, the following Ghost Dance movement and rising of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

Events Leading to the Wounded Knee Massacre

The period of the 1870s was characterized by an invasion of South Dakota, formerly known as the sacred Black Hills (Vincent et al. 17). This intuition prompted a takeover of Indian uprisings with Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Lakota (Sioux) being the leaders.

In 1876 the United States army began an operation against the invaders. Nevertheless, failures to the Sacred Black Hill warriors ended in a battle which was known as Little Big Horn. Throughout this time a Lieutenant by the name Colonel George A. Custer plus some of his men known as Seventh Cavalry were defeated. The defeat was, however, a win for the Indian group.

After the first column defeat, new army columns took over. As a result, Nelson A. Miles who was the general won various battles defeating the Indians, hence the Indians had no option but to litigate for harmony, and then come to an agreement by signing a treaty which was meant to renounce their rights. Their rights were subject to the Black Hills. This turn of events led the majority of the Lakota to go live west part of River Missouri.

In 1881, The Sitting Bull plus his band men came back to South Dakota region (Vincent et al. 19). They had winged towards Canada after the Little Big Horn battle. They later settled on the Standing Rock Reservation, in the year 1883.

The year 1890 came with a spiritual kind of movement, the movement advanced amongst the people of Lakota. From (Meyer 36) this was the Ghost Dance, inspired by Wovoka. Wokova was from Nevada. The Ghost Dance was a concern as army authorities worried that it would lead to the formation of a new Lakota. In 1890 the month of November, an agent from Pine Ridge group called out help from the army after seeing Indians dancing in the snow in a wild manner. In response, General Nelson A. Miles sent Five Thousand men, among them, were a Seventh Cavalry group, who had trained with new soldiers.

Sitting Bull was to be apprehended by the Indian police, but he couldn't comply and was killed (Vincent et al. 19). As a result, hundreds of his band men fled to the Cheyenne River; this is where the Miniconjous of Big Foot was based. After a short time, the Miniconjous were asked by Red Cloud to avail every person to Pine Ridge. However, The Seventh Cavalry was ordered by Nelson Miles to get Big Foot's Miniconjous.

On December 28, Standing Rock Hunkpapas and Miniconjous neighboring Wounded Knee Creek were captured, this command came from Colonel James W. Forsyth, the 350 men, children, and women built up a camp as ordered by soldiers. The camp was secured with Four Hotchkiss artillery pieces as the soldiers premeditated to attack and neutralize the Indians the following day.

The following day, the United States Army's Seventh Cavalry bounded a band of Ghost Dancers. The Ghost Dancers were being commanded by Big Foot; the US army ordered the Ghost Dancers to surrender their weapons. After that, shots were fired due to the fight that broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier; These events led to a ruthless massacre, historians estimate that 150 Indians were killed with approximately half of those killed being children and women. The Seventh cavalry lost 25 of its men (History 4). Various historians have varied opinions regarding the massacre at Wounded Knee with some speculating that the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry were intentionally taking revenge, as a result of regiment's defeat in 1876 at Little Bighorn. Whatever the motives, the Ghost Dance movement ended.

The 1960s and 1970s were accompanied by the rise of Native activism simply a shift from termination to self-determination. The rise of native activism was as a result of deaths of men, children, and women at the Wounded Knee. Consequently, The American Indian Movement (AIM) was formed in the year 1968 to halt the harassment of Indians by police in Minneapolis (Wilkins 1). Although the AIM was established in the year 1968 to protect the rights of the Native American community, the journey to the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 started a long way before the 1960s. With time, the Movement gained national disrepute due to its high end protests the tactics they used, some from the antiwar student demonstrators of the era. The turn of events made Indian leaders disassociate themselves with the group terming it as too radical.

Due to anger which was fueled by mistreatment, discrimination and violated treaties, 200 members of the AIM occupied the tiny hamlet of Wounded Knee which is located at South Dakota. In the year 1972, a section of AIM members who were led by Leonard Peltier and Dennis Banks decided to make treaties with the traditional tribal elders. Peltier and Banks succeeded on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota; The success came after a group of young whites killed Yellow Thunder who was Sioux Indian. Yellow Thunder's killers received six-year term in prison; the imprisonment of the young whites was seen as a great victory. This is because the local Sioux were used to unfair treatment by Anglo judicial system which was a racist kind of system. AIM use to conduct a high public campaign on the case, this served a great deal for a credible verdict, and as a result, the movement gained reverence on the reservation.

The American Indian Movement threatened Dick Wilson who was chairman of Sioux. The movement had plans to protest against Dick Wilson's administration which was located at Pine Ridge when the chairman learned this; he resorted to seeking protection from Bureau of Indian Affairs police and federal marshals (Wilkins 1). The federal government reacted by sieging the Wounded Knee. The siege was characterized by gunfire almost every night, people getting arrested and killing of two Native Americans, a federal marshal got permanently paralyzed as a result of a bullet wound. On May 8, the leaders of AIM surrendered and were later acquitted.

Despite the developments at Pine Ridge, the predicaments at Wounded Knee were not yet over. A war broke out between Pine Ridge reservation and Indian factions. The war resulted in shootings, beatings, and murders leaving 100 Indians dead. Effects of the activism can be noted by the imprisonment of the American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier. The activist was convicted then sentenced to life imprisonment for killing two federal officers two years after the occupation at the Pine Ridge in a standoff (Bird 6). Other activists claim that the evidence was interfered with as key witnesses disappeared making the trial unjust. The supporters of Peltier rallied in the city of New York after a 710-mile run which took 12 days from Buffalo, the run aimed to draw attention to activists on Peltier's presentation, and the presentation was before the United Nation Commission on Human Rights and Foreign Relations. The case remains a symbol for AIM and their supporters who continue to maintain that Leonard Peltier was innocent.

Works Cited

Bird, S. Elizabeth. "Introduction: Constructing the Indian, the 1830s-1990s." Dressing in feathers. Routledge, 2018. 1-12.

Heynen, Nik, et al. "The enduring struggle for social justice and the city." (2018): 301-316.

HISTORY. "The Wounded Knee." A&E Television Networks, 2018, www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/wounded-knee

Meyer, Craig A. "From Wounded Knee to Sacred Circles: Oglala Lakota Ethos as "Haunt" and "Wound." Humanities 8.1 (2019): 36.

Vincent Roscigno, Julia Cantzler, Salvatore Restifo, and Joshua Guetzkow. "Legitimation, State Repression, and the Sioux Massacre at Wounded Knee. Mobilization." An International Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 1, 2015, pp. 17-40.

Wilkins, David E., and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark. American Indian politics and the American political system. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Yellow, Maria "The return to the sacred path: Healing the historical trauma and historical unresolved grief response among the Lakota through a psychoeducational group intervention." Smith College Studies in Social Work, vol. 68, no. 3, 1998, pp. 287-305.