They had their greatest success on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, after a group of young white men murdered a Sioux man named Yellow Thunder.Īlthough Yellow Thunder’s attackers received only six-year prison sentences, this was widely seen as a victory by the local Sioux accustomed to unfair treatment by the often racist judicial system. In 1972, a faction of AIM members led by Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier sought to close the divide by making alliances with traditional tribal elders on reservations. However, many mainstream Indian leaders denounced the youth-dominated group as too radical. Borrowing some tactics from the Vietnam war protests of the era, AIM soon gained national notoriety for its flamboyant demonstrations. The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 in an effort to stop police harassment of Indians in the Minneapolis area. Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was one of the last major confrontations in the Indian Wars, America’s deadly series of wars against the Plains Indians and other Native Americans. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment’s defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it’s unlikely that Big Foot’s band would have intentionally started a fight. The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle-the Army troops involved were later rewarded with Medals of Honor-but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. (Some historians put this number at twice as high.) Nearly half of them were women and children. soldier and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side.Ī brutal massacre followed, in which an estimated 150 Indians were killed. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, whom they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge in South Dakota.ĭid you know? Nearly half of the Sioux killed at the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre were women and children. 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. This Day in History: - Massacre at Wounded Knee
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