Wars & Conflicts
Wounded Knee Massacre
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The killing of some two hundred fifty to three hundred Lakota men, women and children by soldiers of the United States Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890, at the close of the federal government's campaign to suppress the Ghost Dance movement among the Lakota. The Ghost Dance had spread to the Lakota reservations that year from the Northern Paiute prophet Wovoka, who taught that the practice would restore the world Native peoples had known before colonization; alarmed federal Indian agents called for troops, and the Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull was killed on December 15, 1890 during a botched attempt to arrest him over his association with the movement. Roughly two hundred of his followers fled to join Spotted Elk's Miniconjou band, and it was this combined group, on its way to a reservation agency under military escort, that the 7th Cavalry surrounded and, after a disputed shot was fired during a disarmament search, opened fire on with rifles and rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns, killing mostly unarmed people including many women and children.
Facts
Consequences
What It SettledThe massacre killed most of Spotted Elk's band and ended organized Lakota participation in the Ghost Dance movement and, with it, the last significant armed Native resistance to United States authority on the Northern Plains. Twenty five soldiers died, a number of them from friendly fire in the confusion of the fighting. A subsequent Army court of inquiry exonerated Colonel Forsyth of wrongdoing, and twenty of his soldiers were later awarded the Medal of Honor for their conduct that day, a decision that has remained a subject of ongoing controversy and formal rescission requests into the twenty first century. The site is a National Historic Landmark, and the massacre remains a central and painful reference point in Lakota historical memory. 1 Religious DimensionThe federal government's campaign that ended at Wounded Knee was a direct response to the spread of the Ghost Dance, a Native American religious movement founded by the Northern Paiute prophet Wovoka, who taught that its practice would bring about the restoration of a world free of colonization and the return of vanished game. The movement reached the Lakota reservations of the Dakotas in 1890, where federal Indian agents, alarmed by its scale and by teachings among some Lakota adherents that ceremonial shirts would repel soldiers' bullets, requested military intervention. Sitting Bull was killed during an arrest attempt connected to his association with the movement, and it was Lakota who had fled that killing, seeking safety, who made up much of the band the 7th Cavalry surrounded and killed at Wounded Knee. The massacre is properly read as the violent suppression of a Native American religious movement by federal authority, not as a war between the United States and a Lakota nation seeking to impose its own faith on others; no ceremonial content of the Ghost Dance or of Lakota religious practice more broadly is described here, in keeping with the atlas's standing restriction on both. 1 The Event
When It Happened Principal PartiesSpotted Elk's Miniconjou Lakota band, joined by roughly two hundred Hunkpapa Lakota who had fled the reservation after Sitting Bull's killing, against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army under Colonel James W. Forsyth, acting under orders from the federal government to disarm and detain Lakota bands associated with the Ghost Dance movement. 1 Victim GroupA Miniconjou Lakota band under Chief Big Foot, encamped after surrendering most of their weapons under Army demand; between 250 and 300 were killed, nearly half of them women and children. 1 Perpetrator RegimeThe United States Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment, which surrounded Big Foot's band on 29 December 1890 amid official alarm over the Ghost Dance spiritual movement and demanded they surrender their weapons before the shooting began. 1 Status
Official RecognitionRecognition is contested 1 Recognition BasisNo formal genocide or crimes against humanity determination has been made by any international body, and the 1891 Army court of inquiry exonerated the 7th Cavalry's conduct at the time. The characterization of the event as a massacre rather than a battle is nonetheless the settled position of modern historians, and members of the United States Congress have formally apologized for it, in a 1990 resolution marking the centennial, and repeated legislative efforts, so far unsuccessful, have sought to rescind the Medal of Honor awards made for it. 1 Disputed
Death TollNo complete or reliable count of Lakota dead was made at the time, since bodies were left in a blizzard for days before burial, so this figure is the low end of the range modern historians, including Utley, converge on for total Lakota deaths, killed and mortally wounded, counting both the initial gunfire and the pursuit of fleeing survivors that continued for miles afterward. Death TollThe upper end of the range historians give for the same total, Lakota killed and mortally wounded across the encounter and its aftermath. Some earlier and popular accounts have cited figures as low as roughly one hundred fifty, but modern historians working from the Army's own contemporary reports and burial records treat two hundred fifty to three hundred as the better supported range; both bounds recorded here describe that same population rather than two different categories of casualty. Learn More
The Ghost Dance Campaign and the Killing at Wounded Knee
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
The Ghost Dance, a religious movement founded by the Northern Paiute prophet Wovoka teaching that its practice would restore the world Native peoples had known before colonization, reached the Lakota reservations of the Dakotas in 1890. Federal Indian agents, alarmed by the movement's scale, requested military intervention, and the Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull was killed on December 15, 1890, during a botched attempt to arrest him over his association with the movement. Roughly two hundred of his followers fled to join Spotted Elk's Miniconjou band, and it was this combined group, traveling toward a reservation agency under military escort, that soldiers of the United States Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment surrounded at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota.
On December 29, 1890, after a disputed shot was fired during a disarmament search of the surrounded band, the 7th Cavalry opened fire with rifles and rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns, killing some two hundred fifty to three hundred Lakota men, women and children, most of them unarmed. The killing ended organized Lakota participation in the Ghost Dance and, with it, the last significant armed Native resistance to United States authority on the Northern Plains.
Recognition Withheld and Revisited: Wounded Knee Since 1891
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
An Army court of inquiry exonerated Colonel James Forsyth's conduct at Wounded Knee within a year of the killing, and twenty of his soldiers were later awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions that day, a decision that has remained a subject of controversy and formal rescission requests into the twenty first century. No international body has ever made a genocide or crimes against humanity determination for the massacre, a vocabulary that postdates it by decades, but the characterization of the event as a massacre rather than a battle is nonetheless the settled position of modern historians, and the United States Congress formally apologized for it in a 1990 resolution marking the killing's centennial.
The massacre is properly read as the violent suppression of a Native American religious movement by federal authority, not as a war between the United States and a Lakota nation seeking to impose its own faith on others. The site is now a National Historic Landmark, and it remains a central and painful reference point in Lakota historical memory, a status neither the 1891 exoneration nor the unresolved Medal of Honor question has altered.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Those killed were Lakota, chiefly Miniconjou and Hunkpapa, and the federal suppression campaign that led to the massacre targeted the Ghost Dance's spread specifically among Lakota reservation communities.
Belongs to Tradition
The killing at Wounded Knee closed the federal government's campaign to suppress the Ghost Dance, a Native American religious movement founded by the prophet Wovoka. The violence was carried out by United States Army soldiers against Lakota people who practiced or were associated with that movement, not committed by it.
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