Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee, hamlet and creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, U.S. It was the site of two conflicts, in 1890 and 1973, between Native Americans and the U.S. federal government.

Wounded Knee Massacre monument

On December 29, 1890, approximately 150–300 Lakota men, women, and children were killed by U.S. troops during the Wounded Knee Massacre, an episode that concluded the federal government’s military campaigns against the Plains Indians. Seeking some hope for improving their difficult living conditions, such as hunger and starvation caused by the reduction in the size of their reservation in the late 1880s, the Lakota responded affirmatively to Wovoka, a Paiute prophet who promised the disappearance of the white man and a return of native lands and buffalo if certain rites and dances were performed. These rites, known as the Ghost Dance, caused alarm among white settlers and led to federal military intervention.

Wounded Knee Massacre

The U.S. Army subdued the Ghost Dance movement, but Chief Sitting Bull was killed by reservation police while being arrested on December 14, 1890, and a few hundred Lakota people left their reservation at Pine Ridge, seeking to hide in the Badlands. Technically classified as hostiles because they had left the reservation, they gathered around the Miniconjou Lakota chief Sitanka, also known as Big Foot. However, they surrendered quietly to pursuing troops of the 7th Cavalry on the night of December 28. Following an overnight encampment near Wounded Knee Creek, Sitanka’s group was surrounded and nearly disarmed when a scuffle broke out over a rifle that a Lakota refused to give up. A shot went off within the group of struggling men, and, from close range, the soldiers, supported by Hotchkiss machine guns, fired into the Lakota, killing many of them instantly. Those who fled were pursued, and some were killed miles from the camp. Although the total number of Native people who died during the Wounded Knee Massacre is unknown, 146 men, women, and children were buried by the U.S. Army in a mass grave soon after the massacre. At least 28 U.S. soldiers were killed.

1973 standoff at Wounded Knee

On February 27, 1973, some 200 members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), led by Russell Means and Dennis Banks, took the reservation hamlet of Wounded Knee by force, declared it the Independent Oglala Sioux Nation, and vowed to stay until the U.S. federal government met AIM’s demands for a change in tribal leaders, a review of all treaties made with Native peoples, and a U.S. Senate investigation of the treatment of Native Americans. The protesters were immediately surrounded by federal marshals, and a siege began. It ended on May 8 when AIM members surrendered and evacuated Wounded Knee in exchange for a promise of negotiations with the federal government. Two protesters were killed and one federal marshal was seriously wounded during the siege, which alternated between negotiation and exchanges of gunfire.