wounded knee massacre 1890 extra credit

Wounded Knee is a Native American massacre that occurred at Wounded Knee Creek on the day of December 29, 1890. The day before the massacre the 7th U.S. Cavalry arrested the village led by Big Foot of the Hunkpapa Sioux Indians. In this arrest there was 350 people, a majority were women and children. The morning of the massacre, Hotchkiss guns were directed at the Wounded Knee Village. Colonel James W. Forsyth had his 500 troops begin to disarm all Indians of anything and everything that could be used as a weapon. All of these items that were able to be used as weapons were put in to a large pile that was guarded by many troops.

The events that probably led to this were the murder of Sitting Bull, which angered the Hunkpapa Sioux Indians as well as the Miniconjou Sioux Indians. They had to leave there reservations and go to the Badlands. The Indians have been oppressed and have to live on reservations that are so different than where they used to live. The buffalo they used to hunt are no longer there so they had to find new ways to get food. The Indians hated what was going on and they looked for any kind of hope that they could find. A Paiute Shaman named Wovoka was that glimpse of hope. He said he was the Messiah and he promised that the Indians would be able to go back to living their old ways once the dead come to earth and meet with the living, and a tidal wave of soil will cover the earth burying all white people. Wovoka made a dance called the ghost dance which was supposed to make this change on earth come sooner than planned. This dance involved wearing ghost shirts that were supposed to stop the bullets from the American’s guns from killing them. This dance scared the white people, which in one case made a military group show up at a reservation to stop any suspected violence from occurring. This arrival of the military support led to the arrest of Sitting Bull, but instead of arresting him, the troops killed him and put Big Foot as the next Indian to arrest or kill. When Big Foot got the news of Sitting Bull’s death he led his tribe south to the Pine Ridge reservation where he sought protection, but on his way there he was stopped by the Army and forced to camp at Wounded Knee Creek, on December 28, 1890. The next morning, the very ill and dying chief Big Foot led his tribe’s men and the army officers in a powwow. Then out of no where there was the sound of a gun going off that started a hail of gunfire from soldier’s rifles and Hotchkiss guns grapeshot’s. As this was occurring many brave Indians ran to grab the weapons that had been taken from them, in a last effort to change the horrible massacre that was occurring right in front of them. While the brave ones tried to fight, the many afraid Indians tried to run only to be killed by the army’s crossfire. Once all the shooting was over, almost 300 Sioux Indians had already been killed including Big Foot, and only 25 soldiers were killed in this massacre. The next day the troops started to clean up the corpses of the massacred, but a blizzard came in and forced them to seize the task for a few days before finishing picking up the dead bodies. This massacre ended all declared Indian wars.