Qualla: Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee: Introduction

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. On the morning of December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Miniconjou Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The soldiers had orders to disarm the group and escort them to the railroad for removal from the area. As weapons were being collected, a shot rang out - accounts differ on who fired first - and within minutes the soldiers' rifles and four Hotchkiss mountain guns were pouring fire into the Lakota camp. When the shooting stopped, approximately 250 Lakota lay dead, including Chief Big Foot and scores of women and children. Twenty-five soldiers also died, many from friendly fire. The Army awarded twenty Medals of Honor to participants - a grotesque recognition that generations of Native Americans have sought to have revoked. Wounded Knee marked the effective end of armed Native American resistance to U.S. expansion. It also became the symbol of everything that conquest had meant: broken treaties, stolen land, systematic destruction of a people and their way of life. In 1973, Wounded Knee would make headlines again when members of the American Indian Movement occupied the site, demanding treaty rights and government accountability.

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Wounded Knee: The Ghost Dance

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The tragedy at Wounded Knee grew from desperation and misunderstanding. By 1890, the Lakota had lost their buffalo, their land, and their freedom. Confined to reservations, dependent on government rations that were frequently late or inadequate, they faced cultural extinction. In...

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Wounded Knee: The Massacre

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Big Foot was already dying of pneumonia when his band camped at Wounded Knee Creek. The next morning, soldiers began confiscating weapons. Tensions escalated when a deaf man named Black Coyote refused to surrender his rifle - accounts suggest he didn't understand the order or bel...

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Wounded Knee: Aftermath

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit derivative work: Tadam (talk) Wounded_Knee_mapa.jpg:, Public domain. The Army's official report characterized Wounded Knee as a battle, not a massacre - a fiction that the twenty Medals of Honor reinforced. Native Americans knew better. Black Elk, then a young man who witnessed the aftermath, later told his story to poet John Neihardt: 'I did not ...

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Image: derivative work: Tadam (talk) Wounded_Knee_mapa.jpg: | Public domain

Wounded Knee: 1973 Occupation

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. On February 27, 1973, approximately 200 members of the American Indian Movement and local Oglala Lakota occupied the town of Wounded Knee, demanding a review of all treaties between the U.S. government and Indian nations, and calling for investigations into the treatment of Nativ...

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Wounded Knee: The Site Today

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Napa, CC BY 2.5. Wounded Knee lies within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Shannon County, South Dakota - one of the poorest counties in the United States. A simple monument marks the mass grave on the hill, surrounded by a chain-link fence and scattered with offerings left by visitors: tobac...

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Image: Napa | CC BY 2.5