voluntarily moving closer to the Pine Ridge Agency
by late December.
Ghost Dancers led by Chief Big Foot are en
route to the agency when they are confronted by
the Seventh Cavalry near Wounded Knee Creek.
Starving and freezing, the group—including about
100 men and 250 women and children—surrenders
to the soldiers on December 28. The next morning,
the troops, exhausted after a night of celebratory
drinking, attempt to disarm Big Foot’s people. In
the search for weapons, they treat the Indians, par-
ticularly the women, roughly and disrespectfully. As
tensions rise, one warrior refuses to give up his gun.
When the soldiers grab for it, the gun goes off. In
the ensuing chaos, the troops begin firing into the
crowd of Indians. The uninjured flee toward the
surrounding woods, chased by soldiers. Bodies of
women, children, and babies, riddled with bullets,
will later be found as far as three miles away from
the camp.
The hideous slaughter of Big Foot’s band at
Wounded Knee is one of the greatest tragedies
in American Indian history. Though only one
out of a series of Indian massacres committed by
the U.S. Army, it will take on a larger symbolic
importance. Often cited as the end of the Indian
Wars, Wounded Knee will become an emblem
of the centuries of injustices inflicted on Indian
peoples and a rallying point for future Indian
activists, particularly during the Red Power move-
ment of the late 1960s and early 1970s (see entry
for FEBRUARY 28, 1973).