Why is battle of wounded knee important

These events will never take a place on the front of our history books, but they must never lose their place in our national memory. Armed conflict was still prevalent in the American West in the s between the U. Army and the Native American population, even after most of the tribes there had been displaced or had their populations reduced in great numbers. The Battle of Little Bighorn in had been the most fierce of the wars with the Sioux, which had started in the mids, when Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had gone to war to defend the Black Hills after the U.

The remaining Sioux were spread out in their reservations and eventually were placed onto a central reservation in the Dakota territory and were practicing a ritual known as the Ghost Dance. The dance was supposed to drive the white men from Native American territory and restore peace and tranquility to the region. As they were peacefully doing so, one deaf Sioux warrior did not understand the command to turn over his rifle.

As his rifle was being taken from him, a shot went off in the crowd. The soldiers panicked and open fired on everyone in the area. As the smoke cleared, dead Lakota and 25 dead U. Many more Lakota were later killed by U. The military's rifle fire was complemented with cannon rounds from Hotchkiss guns, whose accuracy and exploding shells were formidable.

The outnumbered and outgunned Lakotas fled, and for several hours intermittent gunfire continued, with the military in pursuit. Bodies were found as far away as three miles from the camp. Firing ceased, and by midafternoon the troops had gathered up their dead and wounded, as well as Lakota wounded, and returned to Pine Ridge Agency.

The fear of a reprisal attack kept troops and civilians entrenched at the agency until January 3, , when a military-escorted civilian burial party proceeded to the site of the massacre.

There they buried Lakotas in a single mass grave. Other dead were accounted for later, bringing the total to more than Lakotas; the Seventh Cavalry lost twenty-five men. Photographers accompanied the burial detail and made a total of sixteen photographs. A snowstorm that occurred shortly after the massacre added a cold and grim edge to the scene of carnage. The photographs sold well and, together with news stories, carried the story of the massacre at Wounded Knee worldwide.

Soon the event developed a meaning that transcended the reality of the tragic loss of life, and Wounded Knee became, and remains, the symbol of the inhumanity of U. John E. Carter Nebraska State Historical Society. Jensen, Richard E. Eli Paul, and John E. Eyewitness at Wounded Knee. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Mooney, James.

Utley, Robert. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. XML: egp. Image credits. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains David J. At its peak, perhaps one in three Lakotas joined the dance circle, and the exuberance of believers was spectacular, with hundreds dancing at any moment and dozens falling into visions.

But to U. Why did the dancing elicit such strong condemnation? While most officials recognized Ghost Dancers were peaceful, they were nonetheless perturbed by the sudden appearance of the large circles of ecstatic dancers. The rhythmic movement of bodies proved to white observers that Indians were refusing to assimilate, to abandon old religions and embrace Christianity.

And yet, to many Indians and even a few white defenders, the Ghost Dance religion also looked a lot like Christianity. By , Northern Paiutes had long since entered the Nevada workforce as teamsters, road graders, builders, domestic servants, and general rural laborers. Wovoka himself was a well-regarded ranch hand. According to multiple accounts from the period, he instructed his followers not only to dance, but also to love one another, keep the peace, and tell the truth.

Such teachings were transmitted to distant followers on the Plains. The Ghost Dance religion was no militant rejection of American authority, but an effort to graft Indian culture on to new ways of living, and to the new economy of wage work, farming, and education that the reservation era demanded. But to government officials, the dancing was a sign of religious dissent and had to be stopped. On December 28, some heavily-armed cavalry accepted the surrender of a village of elderly Minneconjous, women, children, and some lightly-armed men.

The next morning, as troops were carrying out orders to disarm their prisoners, a gun fired, probably by accident. Nobody was hurt, but an impulsive commanding officer ordered his troops to open fire. By the time the shooting stopped, some Lakotas lay dead and dying. In the aftermath, a brief shooting war finally erupted, with skirmishes taking the lives of dozens of Indians and a handful of soldiers before Lakotas once more surrendered their arms.

To this day, the pain of Wounded Knee is still deeply felt within the Pine Ridge community and by descendants of the victims. The stain of the Wounded Knee Massacre remains on the army and the U. But efforts to suppress the Ghost Dance religion had the opposite effect. Army violence convinced many believers that its prophecies must be true, and that the government was trying to stop them from being fulfilled.