01/02/2026
In late 1890, as part of its suppression efforts of the Ghost Dance movement on the Great Plains, the U.S. government sent troops onto Lakota lands. On December 28, the Seventh U.S. Cavalry intercepted Spotted Elk’s band of Miniconjou Lakotas and more than two dozen Hunkpapa Lakotas, who were heading to the Pine Ridge Agency, and escorted them to the cavalry’s camp near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
The next day, December 29, the troops, with reinforcements having arrived and surrounded the encampment overnight, attempted to disarm the Lakota men of their weapons. Although historians and others have debated exactly how the violence began, during the disarmament process, a gun went off, beginning a melee of shooting. Soldiers opened fire, much of it indiscriminate, on the Lakotas, who attempted to defend themselves with the weapons they still had. By the end of the fighting, at least 146 Lakota men, women, and children had been killed, among them Spotted Elk, and many were wounded. However, modern estimates place the number killed between 250 and 300. Twenty-five soldiers were killed and more were wounded, although it is probable many were shot by friendly fire.
The Wounded Knee Massacre was one of the final military actions against American Indians on the northern Plains, marking a tragic climax to the Indian wars in the American West, and one of the darkest days in United States history. Today, the massacre site is a National Historic Landmark and memorial site, with a monument that was erected in 1903 by survivors to remember those who had died at Wounded Knee.
To read a collection of firsthand account from survivors and witnesses, see Jerome Greene's book, “All Guns Fired at One Time: Native Voices of Wounded Knee, 1890”: https://www.sdhspress.com/books/all-guns-fired-at-one-time.
You can also listen to a History 605 podcast interview with Greene about the book at https://www.sdpb.org/2021-04-06/history-605-s1-ep-6-all-guns-fired-at-one-time-wounded-knee.
“South Dakota History” has articles about Wounded Knee that are free to read online, including:
“Prelude to Wounded Knee: The Military Point of View”:https://www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-4-3/prelude-to-wounded-knee-the-military-point-of-view/vol-04-no-3-prelude-to-wounded-knee.pdf
"The Historiography of . . . Wounded Knee":https://www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-6-1/the-historiography-of-the-bloody-field-that-kept-the-secret-of-the-everlasting-word-wounded-knee/vol-06-no-1-the-historiography-of-the-bloody-field-that-kept-the-secret-of-the-everlasting-word.pdf
“Another View of Wounded Knee”:https://www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-16-3/another-view-of-wounded-knee/vol-16-no-3-another-view-of-wounded-knee.pdf
and “Wounded Knee: Centennial Voices”: https://www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-20-4/wounded-knee-centennial-voices/vol-20-no-4-wounded-knee.pdf.
Image: The 1903 monument erected by Wounded Knee survivors to memorialize those who died.
