Wounded Knee Essay, Research Paper

Wounded Knee

Essay submitted by Julia Hacker

Wounded Knee was a awful event in US history. It showed how the US authorities

didn & # 8217 ; t understand the Native Americans and treated them severely and below the belt.

Large Foot was the head of a subtribe of the Lakota called Miniconjou. He was really old

and had pneumonia. He was taking his folk to the Pine Ridge Reservation in

south-western South Dakota.

Most of the adult females and kids in Big Foot & # 8217 ; s tribe were household members of the warriors

who had died in the Plains wars. The Indians had agreed to populate on little reserves

after the US authorities took away their land. At the Wounded Knee cantonment, there were

120 work forces and 230 adult females and kids. At the cantonment, they were guarded by the US

Seventh Cavalry lead by Major Samuel Whitside. During the twelvemonth 1890 a new dance

called the Ghost Dance started among the Sioux and other folks. The Sioux & # 8217 ; s Christ

figure, Wovoka, was said to hold flown over Sitting Bull and Short Bull and taught them

the dance and the vocals. The Ghost Dance fable was that the following spring, when the

grass was high, the Earth would be covered with a new bed of dirt, covering all white

work forces. Wild American bison and Equus caballuss would return and there would be fleet running H2O,

sweet grass, and new trees. All Indians who danced the Ghost dance would be drifting

in the air when the new dirt was being laid down and would be saved. The Ghost Dance

was made illegal after the Wounded Knee slaughter though. On December 28, 1890 the

Seventh Cavalry saw Big Foot traveling his folk and Large Foot instantly put up a white

flag. Major Samuel Whitside captured the Indians and took them to an ground forces cantonment near

the Pine Ridge reserve at Wounded Knee. Whitside took Bigfoot on his waggon

because it was more comfy and heater, and Big Foot was ill. Whitside had

orders to take the Indians to a military prison in Omaha the following twenty-four hours, but it ne’er

happened. That dark Colonel Ja

Maines W. Forsyth took over. The Cavalry provided the

American indians with collapsible shelters that dark because it was cold and there was a snowstorm coming. The

following twenty-four hours, December 29, 1890, the Cavalry gave the Indians pilot biscuit for breakfast.

There was a seize of weaponries and the soldiers took all the Indian & # 8217 ; s guns off. A medical specialty

adult male named Yellow Bird told the Indians to defy the soldiers and non give up the guns,

he did a few stairss of the Ghost Dance. The Sioux gave up all their guns but two. One

belonged to a deaf Indian named Black Coyote. He said he had merely paid a great trade of

money for his new rifle and didn & # 8217 ; t want to give it up. The soldiers grabbed it from him

and it discharged in the air, so other soldiers started firing at all the Indians. The

Cavalry had four Hotchkiss guns, which looked sort of similar cannons and could hit two

lbs of explosive shells at a rate of 50 per minute. The Indians tried to run off and

non acquire shooting, they weren & # 8217 ; t making anything incorrect and had been collaborating really good,

but the soldiers kept hiting. The Indians tried to run into a ravine and some dropped

dead or others were wounded and fell to the land and couldn & # 8217 ; t acquire up. Most of the

wounded 1s died in that ravine. The consequences of the short conflict were that 25 soldiers

were killed, about all of them from their ain crossfire. 153 Sioux died on the topographic point, and

more died in the ravine subsequently on. The concluding decease toll for the Indians was about 350,

that & # 8217 ; s about all of them that were at that place in the first topographic point. All the dead organic structures,

including Large Foot, who was shot near the beginning of the conflict, were put into a immense

mass grave. There was a holy adult male named Black Elk from another folk who saw all the

dead and wounded Indians in the ravine and the field. He was one of the lone Native

American informants of the slaughter. Wounded Knee was one of the worst things

between the US authorities and any other group of people in the United States of all time.

It would be awful if anything like that of all time happened once more.