The Wounded Knee Massacre was an armed conflict between Native Americans and the United States Army that occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It was part of the U.S. Army's Pine Ridge Campaign and followed a failed attempt to disarm the Lakota people at the camp. The conflict arose from tensions between federal forces and the Lakota, who had gathered in the area.
On December 28, 1890, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside approached Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte. The soldiers escorted them five miles westward to Wounded Knee Creek, where they established a camp. The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth, subsequently arrived and surrounded the encampment. The conflict erupted on December 29, 1890, during the attempted disarmament of the Lakota people.
The massacre resulted in significant casualties on both sides. Between 250 and 300 Lakota people were killed, with 51 wounded, including four men and 47 women and children, some of whom died later. U.S. Army casualties included 25 soldiers killed and 39 wounded, of whom six later died. The event received substantial military recognition, with 19 soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor specifically for Wounded Knee, and 31 soldiers receiving the award overall for their participation in the entire Pine Ridge Campaign.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
Lakota: between 250 and 300 killed, 51 wounded (four men and 47 women and children, some of whom died later); U.S. Army: 25 killed, 39 wounded (six of the wounded later died)
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