Wounded Knee Massacre , (December 29, 1890), the slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Indians by United States Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota . The massacre was the climax of the U.S. Army’s late 19th-century efforts to repress the Plains Indians . It broke any organized resistance to reservation life and assimilation to white American culture , although American Indian activists renewed public attention to the massacre during a 1973 occupation of the site.

Context

For much of the United States’ period of westward expansion, white settlers’ attempts to claim plots of land were met with fierce and sometimes violent resistance from indigenous peoples. This resistance intensified in the latter half of the 19th century as the U.S. federal government repeatedly signed and violated treaties with various Plains tribal leaders. Most prominent among these were the Sioux Indians, of which the Lakota are a subgroup. The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 established the 60-million-acre Great Sioux Reservation and created agencies to represent the federal government among each tribe. If the Lakota stayed on the reservation and refrained from attacking white settlers, they would be provided with food rations, education, and other state-funded benefits. However, U.S. interest in natural resources on the reservation resulted in a series of conflicts that saw the Great Sioux Reservation shrink from 60 million acres to 21.7 million acres by 1877. The General Allotment Act of 1887 further reduced the acreage to a mere 12.7 million, barely 20 percent of the original allotment. The unbroken tract of land now consisted of six separate reservations centred on existing federal agencies.

Sherman, William T.; Sioux Gen. William T. Sherman and his staff negotiating the Treaty of Fort Laramie with representatives of the Sioux and Arapaho tribes in what is now Wyoming. National Archives, Washington, D.C. (Identifier no. 531079)

Fort Laramie, Treaty of; Sioux Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1868. National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Reservation life was an abrupt and difficult adjustment for the Lakota who acquiesced to the U.S. government. Federal agents encouraged them to raise livestock and grow crops, a lifestyle that was unsuited to the semiarid environment of the northern Great Plains and largely foreign to a nomadic people who hunted game. The Lakota were required to adopt Western dress, learn English, observe Christian principles, and abandon traditional religion. This process of forced assimilation hacked away at Lakota culture and identity, and the government rations program in particular made reservation life impractical to escape. Without access to their large swaths of hunting grounds, the Lakota were forced to rely on government-issued rations for survival. In 1889 the U.S. Congress slashed the annual Lakota rations budget. When combined with the harsh winter and drought of 1889–90, the tribe was pushed to the brink of starvation.

Lakota camp Lakota camp near Pine Ridge Reservation, southwestern South Dakota, U.S., 1891. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Sioux Idealized depiction of life for the Sioux at the Standing Rock Agency. Government-issued cattle were enclosed in a pen and shot, a practice introduced by U.S. officials as a replacement for the traditional bison hunt. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Such was the state of the Lakota when the Ghost Dance religious movement swept across the Plains in 1890. The Ghost Dance was not a new movement: the first iteration took hold around 1870 among the Northern Paiute in Nevada, but it faded out after a few years. It experienced a revival in 1889 under the leadership of a Paiute prophet named Wovoka, whose father, Tavibo, had been a prominent devotee of the first Ghost Dance and taught his son about the religion. Wovoka was also raised among white ranchers who exposed him to Christianity. During a total solar eclipse on January 1, 1889, Wovoka fell unconscious and experienced a dream that he believed was prophetic. According to his millenarian interpretation, God told him that the Indians needed to remain peaceful and regularly perform a ritual circle dance. If they followed these instructions, then in 1891 God would return the earth to its natural state prior to the arrival of European colonists. He would bury the white settlers under 30 feet (9 metres) of soil and would raise Indian ancestors from the dead. This was an enticing promise for many of the Plains Indians, but Wovoka’s prophetic message struck an especially strong chord among the destitute Lakota. They modified the Ghost Dance to address the intense violence they had endured at the hands of white settlers and the U.S. Army, incorporating white "ghost shirts" painted with various symbols that they believed would protect them from bullets. Not all Lakota took up the Ghost Dance, but it grew in popularity on the reservations throughout much of 1889 and 1890.

Ghost Dance; American frontier Oglala Sioux performing the Ghost Dance. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-3726)

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In August 1890 Daniel F. Royer became head of the Pine Ridge Agency; he arrived at his post in October. Many of the Oglala Lakota on his reservation had become passionate Dancers, and he was both displeased with and fearful of their religion. Whereas some federal agents and officials were more tolerant of the practice, Royer was convinced that the Ghost Dancers were militant and threatened to destroy the U.S. government’s decades-long effort to “civilize” the Lakota. When the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) requested a list of Indian “troublemakers” to be slated for relocation, Royer placed influential Dancers at the top of his list and demanded that the military address the matter.

letter from Buffalo Bill Letter from Buffalo Bill to Brig. Gen. Leonard Wright Colby describing the situation at the Pine Ridge Agency. It reads, “Great change today prospects for peace but would advise strick [sic] vigilance Will keep you advised by telegraph Cody.” Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (ARC Identifier 901939)

In November the U.S. Army arrived on Lakota reservations with the goal of stopping the rise of the Ghost Dance. One source indicates that it was the largest deployment of federal troops since the end of the Civil War in 1865. Near the Standing Rock Agency lived Sitting Bull, a powerful Hunkpapa Lakota chief and spiritual leader who had led the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne to victory in 1876 against the U.S. Army at the Little Bighorn. Many of his 250 followers were Dancers, and, though he personally was not a practitioner, he refused to let the federal government repress them any further. Maj. James McLaughlin, the reservation’s agent, resolved to arrest Sitting Bull for his role in permitting the spread of the religion. Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles commanded U.S. Army forces on the Lakota lands and hoped to take a peaceful approach to removing the Hunkpapa leader from the reservation. McLaughlin chose to undermine that plan, instead dispatching 43 tribal policemen to Sitting Bull’s cabin on December 15. Sitting Bull was compliant, but his followers would not relinquish him without protest. A vicious struggle ensued, and roughly nine Hunkpapa were killed; among the dead was Sitting Bull.

Sitting Bull Sitting Bull, 1884. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-122859)

The death of Sitting Bull struck fear into the hearts of those Lakota who had been opposed to reservation life. Some, numbering in the thousands, gathered in the Stronghold region of the South Dakota Badlands in preparation for a U.S. attack. Others rushed to Pine Ridge, where the Oglala chief Red Cloud was attempting to negotiate the preservation of Lakota traditions without bloodshed. Miniconjou Lakota chief Sitanka, known to the white Americans as Big Foot, hoped to join those at Pine Ridge and help find a peaceful resolution to this tense matter. Although he was not a Ghost Dancer, many of his people were, and he had been placed on the BIA’s list of hostiles. As he was leading some 350 Miniconjou southwest from the Cheyenne River reservation to Pine Ridge reservation, the U.S. Army grew fearful of his intentions. Miles ordered a detachment of the 7th Cavalry to intercept Big Foot, confiscate all weapons in his band, and escort them to a military prison at Fort Omaha, Nebraska.