When Sitting Bull was killed at Standing Rock, many Sioux fled
the reservation in fear. One band of about 100 joined the last of
the traditional chiefs, Big Foot, in his Minneconjou camp on Cheyenne
River. In the hope that the great old chief Red Cloud
would protect them, Big Foot led a party of 120 men and 230 womenand
children south across the frozen Badlands to Pine Ridge. Four
troops of cavalry came upon them on December 28, 1890, and Big
Foot, hemorrhaging from pneumonia, surrendered his party. It was
an eerie encounter. As he talked with his captors, Big Foot coughed
up blood and it froze in the bitter cold, emblematic of the blood
that had flowed in quantities 14 years before: the intercepting
soldiers were in the 7th U.S. Cavalry, Custer’s old regiment,
and some of the men in Big Foot’s party had been among the warriors
that day in June 1876 at Little Bighorn. Major Samuel Whitside
put Big Foot in an ambulance and at nightfall they reached the
cavalry tent camp at Wounded Knee Creek.
The rest of the 7th Cavalry came into camp later that evening. Its colonel, James W. Forsyth, took command and the next morning the Sioux woke to find themselves surrounded by 500 troops, with four rapid-fire Hotchkiss machine guns trained on them from a hillside. Forsyth ranged the captives in a semicircle and ordered them to give up any weapons they had. Not satisfied with the haul of guns and knives, he sent troopers into the tents to search. The Sioux were passive, though the medicine man Yellow Bird danced a few steps of the Ghost Dance and reminded them that their sacred garments made them safe from the white man’s bullets. One young Indian, Black Coyote, who was deaf, objected to giving up his Winchester. He held on to it, and it went off in a scuffle, shooting an officer.
The cavalrymen immediately opened fire on the more or less unarmed Indians. It was not a battle. It was a massacre. The Sioux men fought with knives, clubs, rocks; the women and children ran. The enraged soldiers followed them. It is certain that 200 died, and possibly as many as 300 of the 350. Big Foot was among them. Twenty-five troopers were killed, mostly by their own cross fire.
Twenty Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded and the newspapers romanticized what had happened. “The members of the Seventh Cavalry have once more shown themselves to be heroes in deeds of daring,” declared the Chicago Tribune. Even 100 years later, the Wall Street Journal, in its 18891989 edition, referred to the “battle” of Wounded Knee.
WHITE MAN'S INDIAN
by Robert F. Berkhofer