Analysis: Lakota Accounts of the Massacre at Wounded Knee
The Wounded Knee Massacre, occurring on December 29, 1890, is a pivotal event in American history, symbolizing both the end of the Sioux Wars and the significant decline of armed resistance among Native American groups. This tragic incident unfolded when U.S. troops attacked a camp of Lakota Sioux, predominantly composed of women and children, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 128 to nearly 300 individuals. The aftermath of this massacre led to profound changes in the relationship between the U.S. government and American Indian communities, cementing the transition to reservation life and the erosion of traditional ways of living.
The event is starkly contrasted in narratives, as the American press depicted it as a righteous victory, whereas Lakota testimonies collected shortly after highlight the horror and brutality experienced by the Indigenous people. These accounts, shared by witnesses who were present, reflect a deep-seated trauma and a sense of betrayal felt by the Lakota, even among those who had previously sought peace with the U.S. government. The Wounded Knee Massacre remains a critical point of reflection for understanding the historical context of Native American struggles and the lasting impacts of colonial policies.
Analysis: Lakota Accounts of the Massacre at Wounded Knee
Date: February 11, 1891
Authors: Turning Hawk, Captain Sword, Spotted Horse, and American Horse
Genre: report; memoir
Summary Overview
The massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, which took place on December 29, 1890, is as infamous as it is iconic. The image of United States troops opening fire on a peaceful camp, mostly made up of women and children, is seared into the American conscience. It marked the end of the Sioux Wars, which had dragged on for over twenty years. But in a larger sense, it was also a symbolic end to the armed resistance of American Indian peoples to the forced reservation life. Though the American press lauded it as a victorious battle—revenge for the death of General George Custer at the Little Bighorn—American Indian peoples, not surprisingly, viewed these same events from a very different perspective.
These accounts, some by Lakotas who were actually present at the massacre, were taken down while the memories were still fresh—within forty-five days of the events taking place. They are remarkable not only because of the diversity of backgrounds of the Indian informants, but also because they present a uniformly horrific perspective on the actions of the United States Army.
Defining Moment
Various bands of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Sioux were at war with the United States almost unceasingly from 1862 through 1890. From the Dakota War in Minnesota to the Wounded Knee Massacre, the bands of Sioux fought against the confiscation of their lands by the United States and the changes to their traditional lifeways that went along with it. As semi-nomadic peoples, the Lakotas, Dakotas, and Nakotas had well-established annual circuits that followed the buffalo herds across the Northern Plains. By the time of Wounded Knee, most of that lifestyle was gone. The Lakotas had been forced to sign the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), confining them to the Great Sioux Reservation, which was later broken up in the Black Hills gold rush. Further, Hunkpapa Lakota spiritual leader Sitting Bull had ended his sojourn into Canada in 1881 and settled on the Standing Rock Agency in 1883.
However, the arrival in the fall of 1890 of the Ghost Dance, an intertribal religious movement that promised an end to the Native peoples' troubles, reignited the fears of white Indian agents, such as James McLaughlin, that another uprising was imminent. Sitting Bull's approval of the Ghost Dance led to his death on December 15, 1890, at the hands of tribal police. Upon Sitting Bull's death, about 350 Miniconjou and Hunkpapa Lakotas, of whom some 230 were women and children, left the reservation under the leadership of Spotted Elk (aka Big Foot); eventually they were forced by the US Seventh Cavalry to surrender and make camp on Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. On the morning of December 29, soldiers rode into the camp to disarm the men. Stories vary about what happened to spark the massacre (in the testimony, Spotted Horse claims that the Lakotas fired first, killing one of the soldiers), but, in any event, the surrounding army opened fire with their rifles and four artillery pieces. Estimates of the Lakota losses range from 128 to nearly 300 total dead, most of them women, children, and infants. Twenty-five to thirty-five of the roughly five hundred soldiers present were killed.
The Wounded Knee Massacre is considered a turning point in the history of the relationship between American Indians and the US government. It marked the end of armed resistance by the Sioux and is thought of as a symbolic end to most armed resistance by American Indian peoples across the nation. Reservation life, the breakup of tribal lands into individual parcels (with the larger portion of remaining land sold to white settlers), and the forced assimilation of Indian peoples were to be the fate of most tribal nations.
The testimony of Turning Hawk, Captain Sword, Spotted Horse, and American Horse stands as a rebuttal to the US interpretation of the events of the “battle.” Though not all of them agreed with Big Foot's exodus from the reservation, they are all clear on the brutality of what occurred, as old men, adolescents, women, and children were all killed, seemingly indiscriminately.
Author Biography
In the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre, four Lakotas—Turning Hawk, Captain Sword, Spotted Horse, and American Horse—traveled to Washington, DC, in order to testify to the events for the commissioner of Indian Affairs. Of the four who testified, American Horse was the best known, as he had been an Oglala Lakota leader for some years. He had worked as a scout for the United States Army and had opposed the resistance to Anglo-American expansionism. He favored peace with the United States at any cost and assimilation to Anglo-American culture through Indian education at boarding schools, like Captain Richard Henry Pratt's Carlisle Indian Industrial School. It is clear in the testimony that, although none of the four Lakotas was in favor of the armed resistance advocated by leaders like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, they were all appalled by the carnage at Wounded Knee.
Document Analysis
During the final quarter of the nineteenth century, American Indians were divided in how they looked at the future. Some, such as Lakota leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, had favored attempts to engage the US Army in an effort to maintain their traditional semi-nomadic way of life. Others, such as American Horse and, later in his life, Red Cloud, became known as “reservation chiefs,” who believed that resistance to American expansionism was pointless and reservation life and possibly assimilation into American society was the only future. In the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre, the voices of the reservation chiefs were the only ones left to be heard by the government, and it would remain that way for at least until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. As the commissioner of Indian Affairs gathered testimony on the massacre, it was the pro-assimilation Lakotas who were allowed to speak. But even so, the brutality of the massacre comes through clearly.
Biases are revealed by all of the Lakota witnesses. Turning Hawk describes the Ghost Dance movement that sparked the conflict as a “certain falsehood [that] came… from the west which had the effect of a fire upon the Indians.” The ensuing strife and death of Sitting Bull led Big Foot/Spotted Elk to leave the reservation with a few men and many women and children, eventually ending up camped out on Wounded Knee Creek. When the army came in to disarm the group, Spotted Horse states that it was one of the Lakotas who shot first, sparking the melee. American Horse agrees with him, but quickly points out that what ensued quickly became a massacre, stating, “Then they turned their guns, Hotchkiss guns, etc., upon the women who were in the lodges standing there under a flag of truce.”
Finally, both American Horse and Turning Hawk note that the events of that day had caused many who had been loyal to the US government to question their decision, with some taking up arms against not only the soldiers, but also the reservation officials and the Indian police who protected them. Eventually, the peace chiefs prevailed upon the belligerents, and calm was eventually restored. This calm, however, was one of resignation by many Lakotas. The decades-long Sioux Wars were over, and most accepted the inevitability of reservation life. The four who testified to the commissioner of Indian Affairs were in favor of peace, but nevertheless were clearly horrified by the massacre and distressed at the loss of their own hunting rifles in its aftermath.
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Di Silvestro, Roger L. In the Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Story of the Indian Wars. New York: Walker, 2007. Print.
Eastman, Charles Alexander (Ohiyesa). From the Deep Woods to Civilization. Rpt. Mineola: Dover, 2003. Print.
Mooney, James. The Ghost-Dance Religion and Sioux Outbreak of 1890: Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Washington: GPO, 1896. Print.
Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1932. Print.
Utley, Robert M. Last Days of the Sioux Nation. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004. Print.