Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee is the site of one of the darkest events in American history: the killing of several hundred Lakota men, women, and children by U.S. Army soldiers on December 29, 1890. Long mischaracterized in official accounts as a 'battle,' it is now widely recognized by historians as a massacre, marking the violent end of the Plains Indian Wars and a searing symbol of the U.S. government's treatment of Native nations. The site remains sacred and deeply significant to the Lakota people today.

By 1890, Lakota people on the Pine Ridge and other reservations, facing broken treaty promises, starvation, and the loss of their traditional way of life, had embraced the Ghost Dance movement, a spiritual practice promising the restoration of Native lands and ways of life. Alarmed U.S. officials, misreading the movement as a precursor to violent uprising, moved to suppress it, and tensions escalated after the killing of Lakota leader Sitting Bull during an attempted arrest on December 15, 1890.

A band of roughly 350 to 400 Lakota, led by Chief Spotted Elk (also known as Big Foot), many ill and traveling to seek safety, were intercepted by the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment and escorted to a camp near Wounded Knee Creek. On the morning of December 29, 1890, as soldiers attempted to disarm the camp, a shot was fired under disputed circumstances, and the soldiers opened fire with rifles and rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns on the largely unarmed Lakota, including many fleeing women and children.

Estimates of Lakota deaths range from roughly 150 to 300 or more, with many bodies later found scattered up to two miles from the camp, and 25 soldiers also died, some reportedly from friendly fire. Twenty soldiers controversially received the Medal of Honor for their actions. The event effectively ended large-scale armed Native resistance on the Plains. Survivors and descendants, along with the Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes, have long sought a formal government apology and rescission of the Medals of Honor; a mass grave and memorial now mark the site, which remains under tribal and private ownership rather than as an NPS unit.