ONEOFMANYFEATHERS'
FIELDS of FIRE
Massacre at Wounded Knee
"... every redskin must be killed from off the face of the plains before we can be free from their molestations.
They are of no earthly good and the sooner they are swept from the land the better for civilization"~Major John Vance Lauderdale US Army, 1866 attending surgeon Wounded Knee Massacre 1890.~
It was the 29th day of the Moon of Popping Trees (December) in 1890. Peace was sleeping within the warm winter wind under the murderous eyes of Gatling and Hotchkiss guns, dug into the ridges surrounding the Lakota encampment.
Chief Spotted Elk ("Bigfoot" was the name soldiers gave him), flying the flag of truce within his encampment, was dying from pneumonia. His people were dying from fear of the white soldiers who had come to take revenge for the defeat of their unit, the 7th Cavalry, at Little Bighorn in The Moon When the Chokecherries are Ripe (June) in 1876. All the soldiers needed was the smallest excuse to begin the massacre.
The Hotchkiss guns opened fire, not on the braves, but on the tipi camp full of women and children. The Indian women fled, screaming as shells tracked them across the snow. The small cannon fired a 3.2 inch shell. The soldier standing (Corporal Paul Weinert) received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions at Wounded Knee.
On December 29, 1890 at Wounded Knee, over 300 men, women and children were killed by the United States 7th Cavalry. The wounded, but surviving Sioux of that day were taken by the wagonload to Pine Ridge Agency where they were treated at the Episcopalian mission. Lying on hay spread on the mission floor, they were in plain sight of the words written above the Christian pulpit, "Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men".
"Nothing I have seen in my whole life, ever effected or depressed or haunted me like the scenes I saw that night in that church. One un-wounded old woman held a baby on her lap. I handed a cup of water to the old woman telling her 'give it to the child' who grabbed it as if parched with thirst, and as she swallowed it hurriedly, I saw it gush right out again, a blood stained stream through a hole in her neck. Heart sick, I went to find the surgeon. For a moment he stood there. Near the door, looking over the mass of suffering and dying women and children, and ahhh the silence, the silence they kept was so complete, it was oppressive. And then to my amazement, I saw the surgeon, who I knew had served in the Civil War, had begun to grow pale "this is the first time I have seen a lot of women and children shot to pieces," he said "and I can't stand it."
~ Thomas Tibbles ~ White reporter at Wounded Knee
Battles of not so long ago
Among the Sioux delegates were Short Bull, Fire Thunder, Kicking Bear and Low Dog. Among the Cheyenne were Porcupine and several others including a woman. The delegates from the different tribes met at 
Wind River Reservation in Wyoming which they left around Christmas in 1889. The delegates crossed the mountains to the Pauite Country to see and talk with the messiah, "Wovoka".
Colonel James Forsyth is in command during the negotiations with Big Foot. Forsyth is later removed from command for his actions that day.
On the morning of December 29, 1890, the Sioux chief Big Foot and some 350 of his followers camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek. Surrounding their camp was a force of U.S. troops charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors. The scene was tense. Trouble had been brewing for months.
On December 29, 1890, there was an encounter between Big Foot’s band of Miniconjou Sioux and the 7th US Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. This confrontation is seen as the last major armed conflict between the Indians and the whites in the United States. Although some authors make a brief mention to the incident, saying, "The Army trapped the Indians... and destroyed them", Wounded Knee was a crucial event in the growing hostility between the Sioux Indians and the US government.
The outbreak of Wounded Knee was in part the result of the growing support of the Ghost Dance religion. Founded by Wovoka, a Paiute Indian religious leader, the religion rapidly gained many followers through the Plains Indians. The belief of the Ghost Dance religion was a hope to return to the ‘old ways’. It was taught that God would restore the Indian world to the way it was before whites arrived. Through the dance, the Indians felt they could bring back ancestors and the buffalo killed by the white man. Army leaders feared the religion would lead to an Indian uprising and called for troops to be sent to keep things under control.
General Nelson A. Miles assembled an army of over 5,000 soldiers to handle the Indians of the area. During an attempt to arrest him, Chief Sitting Bull was killed at his camp on December 15, 1890. As Big Foot and his band of 350 people, which consisted of 120 men and 230 women and children, were trying to flee south to the Pine Ridge Agency, 
the 7th Cavalry intercepted them. Federal troops rounded up the Sioux and placed them in a camp on Wounded Knee Creek.
The round up of the Lakota was in response to the growing fear and ignorance on the part of the US Govt. The white people did not know about the culture, beliefs, or lives of the Lakota and saw them as a threat to the society they were trying to preserve: the white society. The Lakota were seen as outsiders; the "other" in a world where a person’s looks and background determined who belonged here. Through much of American history, where a person was born also determined if they belonged. Ironically , the Native Americans were here on this land first, but were treated as though they were visitors. Their assumption was that because they look different or act different, they are not the same; they are not Americans. The white people refused to recognize the Lakota’s right to the land and did everything in their power to remove them. This ignorance led to violence in an obvious act of proving power and control.
Col. James W. Forsyth ordered the Sioux people to be disarmed. A shot was fired and the fighting ensued. The federal troops fired on the Lakota with rifles and powerful, rapid-shooting Hotchkiss guns. Sioux casualties totaled 153 dead and 44 wounded, half of whom were unarmed women and children. Survivors were pursued and butchered by US troops. Cavalry losses totaled 25 dead and 39 wounded. Charges were brought against Col. Forsyth for his part in the bloodshed, but a court of inquiry exonerated him.
At the time, and continually after, people regarded the confrontation as a massacre. This terrible blow to the Lakota people proved to break down their strength in fighting back. To subsequent generations of Indians, it "symbolized the injustices and degredations inflicted on them by the US government". It later served as an inspiration for the 1973 occupation at Wounded Knee.
We must never forget this moment in US history of the horrific destruction of human life and liberty. For many, the picture of US history is filled with tales of brave rebels, fighting for a belief in equality, such as the ideals which started and founded the nation. However, not many recognize the hypocritical actions of the nation which went against this idea of equality. This is just another example where the question of "Who belongs?" and "Who has a right to ‘American’ liberties?" is tested. The Lakota were never allowed a place in the nation, forced to give up their land and suffered immensely in loss of lives and rights. The Wounded Knee massacre serves as a reminder to a time when those people seen as "foreigners" were exterminated and refused their rights as Americans.
Soldiers loaded the dead like cordwood in wagons, and hauled their loads to hastily dug mass graves, where the dead were thrown in - the bodies of men, women, and children whose spirits walked the encampment and ravines, wailing.
I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I first saw them with eyes still young. 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. It was a beautiful dream…the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead. ~Black Elk~
Remember