by Dee Brown
Troopers found only two rifles, one of them a new Winchester belonging to a young Minneconjou named Black Coyote. Black Coyote raised the Winchester above his head, shouting that he paid much money for the rifle and that it belonged to him. Some years afterward, Wasumaza, who had changed his name to Dewey Beard, recalled that Black Coyote was deaf.
If they had left him alone, he was going to put his gun down where he should. They grabbed him and spinned him in the east direction. He was still unconcerned even then. He hadn’t his gun pointed at anyone. His intention was to put that gun down. They came on and grabbed the gun that he was going to put down. Right after they spun him around there was the report of a gun, was quite loud. I couldn’t say that anybody was shot, but following that was a crash.
This map shows the location of Big Foot’s camp and the surrounding cavalry positions just before the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred.
At the sound of the gunshot, the soldiers began firing their weapons. The sound of rifles was deafening, filling the air with powder smoke. Among the dying who lay sprawled on the frozen ground was Big Foot. Then there was a brief lull in the rattle of arms, with small groups of Indians and soldiers grappling at close quarters, using knives, clubs, and pistols. As few of the Indians had arms, they soon had to flee. Then the big Hotchkiss guns on the hill opened up on them, raking the Indian camp, shredding the tepees with flying shrapnel, killing men, women, and children.
In 1891 Harper’s Weekly published this illustration by artist Frederick Remington of the beginning of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Like many other illustrations of the army’s battles with the Indians, this one is historically inaccurate. [LOC, USZ62-89867]
When the madness ended, Big Foot and more than half of his people were dead or seriously wounded. One estimate placed the final total of dead at nearly 300 of the original 350 men, women, and children. Twenty-five soldiers were dead and 39 wounded, most of them struck by their own bullets or shrapnel.
After the wounded cavalrymen started for the agency at Pine Ridge, a detail of soldiers went over the Wounded Knee site, gathering up Indians who were still alive and loading them into wagons. Since a blizzard was approaching, the dead Indians were left where they had fallen. After the blizzard, when a burial party returned to Wounded Knee, they found the bodies, including Big Foot’s, frozen into grotesque shapes.
The wagonloads of wounded Sioux, four men and 47 women and children, reached Pine Ridge after dark. Because the barracks were filled with soldiers, they were left lying in the open wagons in the bitter cold while an inept army officer searched for shelter. Finally the Episcopal mission was opened, the benches taken out, and hay scattered over the rough flooring.
Orlando Scott Goff photographed the ravine where the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred about three weeks after the event. Some of the bodies can be seen in the background. [LOC, USC62-42550]
It was the fourth day after Christmas 1890. When the first torn and bleeding bodies were carried into the candlelit church, those who were conscious saw Christmas greenery hanging from the open rafters. Above the pulpit was strung a banner: PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN.
Another photograph by Orlando Scott Goff of the aftermath of the massacre at Wounded Knee. About three weeks after it happened, a burial party arrived to gather those who had been killed. In the foreground are some of the bodies, covered with blankets. [LOC, DIG-ppmsca-15849]
EPILOGUE
Bittersweet Victory
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.
—BLACK ELK OF THE OGLALA SIOUX
The United States Army awarded the Medal of Honor to 17 soldiers who participated in the fighting at Wounded Knee. Eventually three more soldiers would receive the decoration, bringing the total to 20. At the time, the Medal of Honor was the only award for military valor, and its standards were not as strict as they later became. The policy then was that conduct deserving the Medal of Honor “should not be the simple discharge of duty, but such acts beyond this.” Those acts were not identified.
The official descriptions of the awards for Wounded Knee typically included such phrases as “extraordinary gallantry,” “distinguished conduct,” and “distinguished bravery.”
Though other tribes would continue to observe the Ghost Dance for several years—and one tribe practices it to this day—the massacre at Wounded Knee ended its influence among the Sioux.
On December 10, 1909, Mahpiua-luta, Red Cloud, went to the bosom of the Great Spirit. It was believed he was 90 years old. During the last three years of his life, he had been blind and in declining health. He had outlived all the other Sioux chiefs who had fought the Bluecoats. He had also outlived Chief Joseph and Geronimo, two great chiefs from other Indian nations who had fought in vain to defend their people and land from the United States. Chief Joseph of the Nez Percés died in 1904. It was to fight his warriors that the Bluecoats enlisted the Oglalas from Crazy Horse’s band, sparking the event that resulted in Crazy Horse’s death. The Apache chief Geronimo, the last chief to surrender to the Bluecoats, died the same year as Red Cloud, on February 17. Only the Comanche chief Quanah Parker, the half-breed son of a Comanche chief and a white woman, outlived him, dying two years later, on February 23, 1911.
When the 20th century began, the United States government was well along the road to “reforming” the Indian nations. Reforming was the word used to describe the effort to make all Indians adopt a “civilized” lifestyle. Reformers both inside and outside the government saw tribal society and traditional Indian culture as roadblocks to the Indians’ survival. Therefore they decided that the only way to save these Indians was to unmake them as Indians and remake them as white men. The main instrument of their authority to do this was the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act or the Dawes Severalty Act, after its sponsor Senator Henry L. Dawes. Without consulting the tribes, the government said Indian land could no longer be owned by the tribe as a whole. Instead, like the white man’s land, it would be divided into pieces and each member of the tribe would be “allotted” one portion that he or she would individually own. This was similar to the homestead system used to give white families free land to settle and farm. The maximum size of the parcels of land was 160 acres, which was given to adult males. Other members received smaller amounts of land portioned in different sizes. If there was any reservation land left after all the tribal members had received their allotment, that “surplus” land was sold to whites. The money from the sale was then held in trust by the government, and the interest earned was used to support the tribe.
Not only did the government take more land from the tribes during this period, it also took thousands of their children.
Ever since the arrival of the first white settlers to the American continents, missionaries had worked not only to convert Indians to Christianity but also to educate them. During the late 1800s, the United States government stepped in and sponsored schools in or by reservations. The government became active because it wanted to speed up the assimilation process—integrating the Sioux and other Indians into white society. While tribal parents recognized that it was necessary for their children to get a white man’s education to help them deal with the white men and their ways, they and their children resisted all attempts to eliminate their tribal culture and traditions.
Frustrated by this, the government decided that the only way assimilation would happen was to physically remove the children from their parents and send them to boarding schools far away from the reservations. The first and most famous of these boarding schools was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, established in 1879 in an abandoned military barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Eventually a total of 26 off-reservation government-sponsored boarding schools were created.
The Indian boarding school program was a 12-year education system designed to force-feed a new way of life to the children of the different tribes. The childre
n led a strict and regimented life. They were forbidden to speak their native languages. Their hair was cut in the fashion of white men and women. They had to wear uniforms. They were punished for breaking even the most minor of rules. Many children hated the schools. Scores ran away and attempted to return to their reservations and families. Some died, usually after having contracted a contagious white man’s disease such as measles, which was deadly to Indians because they had no immunity. Once the children graduated from the schools, they returned to the reservation. Many later did what the government hoped and settled in cities outside their reservations.
Over time, the boarding school system was criticized for being harsh and cruel. Finally, in the 1920s, the last of these schools was closed.
Meanwhile the allotment system attempted to make white farmers out of the Sioux on land that was unsuitable for farming. The result was a disaster that left many Sioux starving and in poverty. In 1887 the Sioux and other Indian nations of the Great Plains held about 138 million acres. When the government ended the Dawes Act in 1934, Indian holdings had shrunk to 52 million acres.
But the government was not done. Over the next four decades, the federal government tried a variety of approaches to force assimilation. The last program, started in 1953 and lasting about 10 years, was designed to end the federal government’s responsibility for the social and economic welfare of the tribes and their lands.
But by now the Sioux and other tribes and Native American nations had learned enough of the white man’s ways to fight back using the white man’s own weapons of laws and courts. In 1944, representatives from 50 tribes, most from the Plains Indians, met in Denver, Colorado, and formed the National Congress of American Indians. This organization forced the federal government to end its termination policy and to recognize an Indian policy of “self-determination” that gave the tribes more say over their lives and preserved their culture. It has grown to include 250 tribes and continues to advocate for Indian rights, environmental protection, and natural resources management, as well as the protection of Indian cultures and religious freedom.
In 1968, a more radical and militant Native American activist organization was formed, the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1973, the Pine Ridge Reservation chapter of AIM led by Russell Means and Dennis Banks made national headlines spotlighting the plight of the Sioux. And they did it at Wounded Knee.
Suffering from extreme poverty, racial prejudice from the local white community, and political corruption from the tribal government itself, the Pine Ridge Reservation was an example of how poor conditions were for tribes in general, and the Sioux at Pine Ridge in particular. AIM supported an effort to unseat tribal chairman Dick Wilson, and this effort escalated into numerous violent outbreaks. An attempt to legally remove Wilson from office failed under controversial circumstances. In protest, on February 27, 1973, AIM and Wilson’s opponents occupied Wounded Knee. A combined force of U.S. marshals, FBI agents, Bureau of Indian Affairs police, Wilson’s tribal police, and military troops surrounded the hamlet. The siege became headline news nationwide. After negotiations lasting 71 days, and after two AIM supporters had been killed and a U.S. marshal seriously wounded, the siege was lifted. Banks and Means were arrested and charged with a wide range of crimes ranging from auto theft to criminal conspiracy. The trial lasted more than eight months. In his decision, U.S. District Court Chief Justice Fred Nichol wrote, “I am forced to the conclusion that the prosecution in this trial had something other than attaining justice foremost in its mind….” He added that misconduct by federal prosecutors “formed a pattern throughout the course of the trial.” All charges against Dennis Banks and Russell Means were dropped. Conditions at Pine Ridge continued to remain poor and did not begin to improve until years had passed.
Unlike the National Congress of American Indians, AIM did not have a strong central organization, and in the years following Wounded Knee, it fell into decline. By the 1980s, it was no longer a national organization.
In June 1974, at the Standing Rock Reservation that straddles the border of North and South Dakota, the Sioux hosted the International Indian Treaty Council. It was attended by 5,000 representatives from 98 Native American nations in North and South America. When the council concluded, it issued a declaration establishing an independent Oglala nation and asserting the rights of Native peoples. It specifically charged the United States with “gross violations” of its treaties with Native American nations. One treaty in the list of broken treaties was the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. In 1977, the United Nations gave the organization formal recognition. The International Indian Treaty Council has since grown to become a vocal organization for the rights of Native peoples around the world.
Then in 1980, 103 years after Congress had seized Paha Sapa, the Sioux nation had its decisive day in court. In 1877, Congress tore up the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and took the Black Hills. In 1917, the Sioux Nation began the legal fight to regain Paha Sapa. One early lower-court decision in the Sioux Nation’s favor awarded it more than $17 million plus interest dating back to 1877. But the government fought the ruling, and the case slowly worked its way up to the highest court in the United States, the Supreme Court.
On June 30, 1980, in the case United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the Supreme Court ruled eight to one that Congress was wrong when it took the Black Hills in 1877. It said that the Sioux Nation should receive a fair price for the land, plus 103 years’ worth of interest. The Sioux Nation has said that it does not want money. It wants the return of Paha Sapa.
On December 17, 2007, Russell Means led a group called the Lakota Freedom Delegation to Washington, D.C. The delegation delivered a statement to the federal government, stating that it had the legal claim to about 77,000 square miles of land in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana and that its goal was to establish an independent Republic of Lakotah with that land. Since then Means and other leaders have repeatedly called for the return of tribal lands. In March 2010, these Sioux leaders submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council listing ongoing violations of the terms of the 1851 and 1868 treaties of Fort Laramie by the United States. They also repeated its demand to the president and the secretary of state that the government withdraw from their homeland.
This map shows the location of the proposed Republic of Lakotah and the parts of the five states that would compose it.
Meanwhile, the special account set aside to pay the Sioux for Paha Sapa is more than $750 million, and growing.
They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one: they promised to take our land, and they took it.
—RED CLOUD
Time Line
1851
JULY 23 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux signed between the U.S. Government and the Wahpeton and Santee Sioux.
AUGUST 5 Treaty of Mendota signed between the U.S. Government and the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute Sioux.
1862
AUGUST 17 Little Crow’s War starts when four hungry Sioux warriors make a raid in Acton Township, Minnesota.
AUGUST 23 The Battle of New Ulm. After an initial attack four days earlier, the Sioux make a second effort to capture the village. The battle ends in a draw.
SEPTEMBER 23 The Battle of Birch Coulee. The battle ends in a draw.
SEPTEMBER 26 Two thousand Santee Sioux surrender. Military court trials against them begin.
NOVEMBER 5 Sioux trials end with 303 Santees being sentenced to death. Sixteen receive prison terms.
DECEMBER 6 President Lincoln orders that 39 Sioux may be executed.
DECEMBER 26 After one Santee Sioux is granted a pardon, 38 Sioux are executed by hanging. Two of those executed were not on the execution list.
1863
JULY 3 Little Crow is shot and killed by settlers near Acton Township, Minnesota.
1865
JULY 4 General Patrick E. Connor starts his campaign against the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes living in the Powder Ri
ver country.
AUGUST 28 The Battle of Tongue River, an Arapaho defeat.
1866
JUNE 5 Peace conference begins between U.S. government representatives and the Sioux led by Red Cloud. Its purpose is to open the Bozeman Trail that cuts through the Powder River country.
JUNE 13 Troops led by Colonel Henry Carrington arrive at Fort Laramie planning to build forts on the Bozeman Trail even though the treaty granting them the right to do so has not yet been signed.
JUNE 14 Red Cloud breaks off negotiations. The Indians leave Fort Laramie, and the conference ends in failure.
JULY 13 Construction of Fort Phil Kearny begins in the disputed Powder River country.
DECEMBER 21 The Fetterman Massacre—or the Battle of the Hundred Slain—a Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho victory.
1867
AUGUST 1 The Hayfield Battle is fought between Cheyenne and U.S. cavalry followed by the Wagon Box Battle between the Sioux and U.S. cavalry the next day. Both battles end in a draw.
SEPTEMBER 19 A peace delegation led by General William T. Sherman arrives at Platte City, Nebraska, to try to restart treaty negotiations. Red Cloud refuses to attend.
NOVEMBER 9 General Sherman’s delegation arrives at Fort Laramie. Red Cloud again refuses to attend. After a few days of parleys with lesser chiefs that go nowhere, the peace commission leaves, having failed to sign a new treaty.
Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses. [LOC, USZ62-121245]
1868
JULY 29 U.S. Army troops abandon Fort C. F. Smith, one of the forts on the Bozeman Trail. Red Cloud and his warriors burn it to the ground. A month later, the army abandons Fort Phil Kearny and the Cheyenne destroy it.
