Posted by Jack Lee
When you think of the battle of Wounded Knee you think of an Indian massacre, it’s taught that way in school, so why would anyone think otherwise? Historical records tell us that of the estimated 150 Indians deaths, half killed that day were women and children and that’s all we need to know to call it a massacre. But, if we dare to look just a little deeper than the first paragraph, history then tells us that the Army lost 25 killed in action. There were 75 armed Indian warriors killed too and it is still uncertain who fired the first shot, but they do know a fight broke out between a soldier and an indian warrior. Did a trained soldier break strict orders or did a religious fanatic deliberately start something that quickly escalated out of control?
“Throughout 1890, the U.S. government worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Indians had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs. Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, who they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge.
On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under the Sioux Chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side. A brutal massacre followed, in which it’s estimated almost 150 Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men.”
The Sioux embraced a religion that they believed would lead to the death of all non-Indians and non-believers. Instead they were the ones that nearly became extinct and would have become extinct, if it were not for the charity of the victors. Does this remind you of any group of religious fanatics operating today?
(On this day 29 Dec., Nazi Germany began bombing London in the Battle of Britian.)