by PETER COLE
A mass grave after the Wounded Knee Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota in 1890 PHOTO/Wikimedia Commons
On this day in 1890, the US Army murdered as many as 300 Native American men, women, and children.
As dawn appeared on December 29, 1890, about 350 Lakota Indians awoke, having been forced by the US Army to camp the night before alongside the Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The US Cavalry’s 7th Regiment had “escorted” them there the day prior and, now, surrounded the Indians with the intent to arrest Chief Big Foot (also called Spotted Elk) and disarm the warriors.
When a disagreement erupted, army soldiers opened fire, including with Hotchkiss machine guns. Within minutes, hundreds of children, men, and women were shot down. Perhaps as many as three hundred killed and scores wounded that morning.
Few Americans now know that the deadliest shootings in US history were massacres of native peoples. Today is the anniversary of the largest such massacre.
The event’s common name, “The Battle of Wounded Knee,” obscures the true horrors of that day. For this was no “battle” — it was a massacre.
A People’s Dream
Indigenous peoples were the first to experience the wrath of European conquerors. While no one knows how many people lived in what is now the United States, estimates range from two to eight million before contact. By 1900, about two hundred thousand remained, nearly all consigned to remote wastelands in the interior west that elites considered worthless.
The Lakota, comprised of seven bands, was the largest and most powerful of a larger group of Indians who lived in the northern Plains that together are called Sioux. For most of the nineteenth century, they fiercely resisted the encroachment of US authority and people on their homeland.
Few US citizens or European immigrants lived in the vast interior until after the Civil War. Then, thanks largely to the US government, millions streamed westward aboard government-financed transcontinental railroad lines. The immense lands — seized from Indian nations — and abundant natural resources drew white people wanting to farm, ranch, and mine. They hoped to live independent lives and, just maybe, get rich.
The US government also dispatched the Army to protect “settlers” from increasingly angry Indians.
The government and citizenry considered the lands that Indians had lived upon for millennia to be the property of the United States. Accordingly, natives were killed, displaced, or forced onto “reservations.” The US compelled Indian nations to sign treaties, sacrificing their traditional lands for other, far-smaller parcels often far from home.
Jacobin for more