Posted by The Huggy Merchant on December 29, 2000 at 12:34:46:
This day in 1890.........
In South Dakota, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry commanded by Colonel James W. Forsyth attacks a Sioux Indians encampment at Wounded Knee Creek, massacring some three hundred Sioux, including scores of women and children. Two years earlier, on an Indian reservation in Nevada, a Paiute named Wovoka had begun preaching that an Indian messiah would soon arrive who would restore the American continent to the Indians and reunite them with their dead families. A cult known as the "Ghost Dance" grew from his teachings, and within a year it had spread to dozens of other reservations. On December 15, on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota, Sitting Bull, an influential Sioux leader was killed by Indian police while allegedly resisting arrest. Sitting Bull had become involved in the Ghost Dance movement and was planning on visiting Pine Ridge, the center of the Ghost Dance observances, when the government ordered his arrest and possibly his execution. A group of outraged Sioux Indians left the Standing Rock reservation after his death, and linked up with a Sioux group led by Big Foot traveling to Pine Ridge from the Wind River Reservation. Because of the Ghost Dance movement, thousands of U.S. troops had descended on the area, and on the morning of December 29, Colonel James W. Forsyth of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry caught up with Big Foot's band at Wounded Knee Creek. Forsyth ordered the Sioux to give up their rifles, and entered the Indian encampment. A soldier was fired at, leading to a skirmish in which close to thirty U.S. troops and several dozen Indians were killed. The soldiers managed to retreat from the camp and opened fire on the encampment with their lethal Hotchkiss guns. The guns cut down over scores of the Sioux within minutes, and afterwards individual soldiers massacred any remaining survivors. Close to three hundred Sioux men, and women, and children died that day to the approximately thirty U.S. soldiers killed. Many members of the Seventh Cavalry regarded the massacre as a just reprisal for the near annihilation their regiment by the Sioux at the Battle of Bighorn fourteen years before. The Wounded Knee Massacre marked the end of the Ghost Dance conflict, and was also the last major military encounter between Native-Americans and the U.S. government.
So the thought for the day is.........
"If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, and in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows."
Sitting Bull, Sioux Chief & Medicine Man, 1831-1890)