The Battle At Wounded Knee

The Battle At Wounded Knee

On December 15, 1890 authorities feared that the Sioux's new Ghost

Dance³ religion might inspire an uprising. Sitting Bull permitted Grand

River people to join the antiwhite Ghost Dance cult and was therefore

arrested by troops. In the fracas that followed, he was shot twice in the

head.

Sitting Bull' followers were apprehended and brought to the U.S

Army Camp at Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota.

Moving among the tipis, soldiers lifted women's dresses and

touched their private parts, ripping from them essential cooking and

sewing utensils. The men sitting in the council heard the angry shrieks of

their wives, mothers, and daughters. Several Lakota, offended by the

abusive actions of the cavalry, stubbornly waited to have their weapons

taken from them. It was a show of honor in front of their elders, for few

of them were old enough to have fought in the "Indian Wars" fifteen years

before.

That night, everyone was tired out by the hard trip. James Asay, a

Pine Ridge trader and whiskey runner, brought a ten-gallon keg of whiskey

to the Seventh Cavalry officers. Many of the Indian men were kept up all

night by the drunken Cavalry where the soldiers kept asking them how old

they were. The soldiers were hoping to discover which of the men had been

at the Battle of Little Bighorn where Custer was killed.

On the bitterly cold morning of December 29, 1890, Alice Ghost

Horse, a thirteen- year old Lakota girl rode her horse through the U.S Army camp

looking for her father, one of the Indian men who had been rounded up

earlier that day.

Less than fifty yards away she could see her father sitting on the

ground with other disarmed men from Chief Big Foot's band, surrounded by

more than 500 heavily armed soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry. She looked

North up the hill where four "guns on wheels" were mounted. Troopers

watched silently on each side of the Hotchkiss battery.

To one side Alice noticed a familiar figure standing with hands

raised above his head, his arms turned upward in prayer. It was the

medicine man by the name of Yellow Bird. He stood facing the east, right

by the fire pit which was now covered with dirt. He was praying and

crying. He was saying to the spotted eagles that he wanted to die instead

of his people. He must have sense that something was going to happen. He

picked up some dirt from the fire place and threw it up in the air and

said, "This is the way I want to go, back to dust.