The Wounded Knee Massacre took place on 29 December 1890 at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. Soldiers of the US 7th Cavalry, attempting to disarm a band of Lakota under Spotted Elk, opened fire and killed an estimated 150 to 300 people, many of them women and children. It is remembered not as a battle but as a massacre, and it marked the end of armed Native resistance in the Indian Wars.3
What happened at Wounded Knee is often listed among battles, but it was not one. It was the killing of a hungry, half-disarmed people, many of them women and children, and it stands as one of the darkest days in the history of the American West.4
The Ghost Dance and the fear it caused
By 1890 the Lakota had been confined to reservations, their way of life destroyed and their people hungry. A spiritual movement, the Ghost Dance, spread hope of renewal, but it alarmed US officials, who sent in troops. In the tension, the revered leader Sitting Bull was killed during an arrest.5
Spotted Elk's band
Fearing further violence, a band of Miniconjou and Hunkpapa Lakota under the ailing chief Spotted Elk, also called Big Foot, set out across the frozen plains. Intercepted by the 7th Cavalry, they surrendered and were escorted to a camp beside Wounded Knee Creek.6
The disarmament
On the morning of 29 December the soldiers, with four rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns trained on the camp from a nearby hill, moved to disarm the band. The Lakota were surrounded and heavily outnumbered in firepower. As the soldiers searched for weapons, tension rose, and a shot was fired in a struggle, its origin disputed.7
The killing
At that shot the soldiers opened fire into the camp. In the chaos the rapid-fire guns swept the lodges and the people trying to flee, killing fighters, women and children alike; some soldiers were hit by their own crossfire. Women and children who fled were hunted down, some of them killed miles from the camp, and wounded survivors left on the field faced the blizzard that swept the plains in the following days. The Army's burial count was about 150, but most historians now put the toll higher, at 200 to 300.8
Why Wounded Knee is remembered
Wounded Knee is remembered as a massacre, not a battle, and as the brutal end of the long Indian Wars and of armed Native resistance on the Plains. The Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers there and the official accounts that called it a battle have been widely criticized. In 2025 the Secretary of Defense announced that the twenty medals would stand, though calls to rescind them continue, and the site is a place of mourning for the Lakota and a byword for the cost of conquest.9
