Remember the Massacre at Wounded Knee
12.29
Remember the Massacre at Wounded Knee
Peter Cole
On this day in 1890, the US Army murdered as many as 300 Native American men, women, and children.
As dawn appeared on December 29, 1890, about 350 Lakota Indians awoke, having been forced by the US Army to camp the night before alongside the Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The US Cavalrys 7th Regiment had escorted them there the day prior and, now, surrounded the Indians with the intent to arrest Chief Big Foot (also called Spotted Elk) and disarm the warriors.
When a disagreement erupted, army soldiers opened fire, including with Hotchkiss machine guns. Within minutes, hundreds of children, men, and women were shot down. Perhaps as many as three hundred killed and scores wounded that morning.
Few Americans now know that the deadliest shootings in US history were massacres of native peoples. Today is the anniversary of the largest such massacre.
The events common name, The Battle of Wounded Knee, obscures the true horrors of that day. For this was no battle it was a massacre.
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/wounded-knee-massacre-lakota-us-army/
pangaia
(24,324 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)ffr
(22,670 posts)Not in high school and not in college. Now I know why. It's an embarrassing reminder that the white man is the conqueror, a violent, mean-spirited race that will take what it wants, including life, without remorse.
Truly sad set of stories, that we still seem to portray today, we white men. Ashamed of that part of my heritage.
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)Thank you for the thoughtful, painstaking painting. Beautiful.
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)DreamGypsy
(2,252 posts)Indigo Girls.
Lest we ever forget...
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)Feeling the Bern
(3,839 posts)and all those I didn't mention.
pfitz59
(10,381 posts)nikto
(3,284 posts)If Trump takes a pro-Pipeline-Business hard-line, tragedy may result.
http://thesuspicionist.blogspot.com/2016/12/standing-rock-sioux-vs-trump-new.html
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)nikto
(3,284 posts)Jopin Klobe
(779 posts)Historian Will G. Robinson notes that, in contrast, only three Medals of Honor were awarded among the 64,000 South Dakotans who fought for four years of World War II.
Native American activists have urged the medals be withdrawn, as they say they were "medals of dishonor". According to Lakota tribesman William Thunder Hawk, "The Medal of Honor is meant to reward soldiers who act heroically. But at Wounded Knee, they didn't show heroism; they showed cruelty." In 2001, the National Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions condemning the Medals of Honor awards and called on the U.S. government to rescind them.
Some of the citations on the medals awarded to the troopers at Wounded Knee state that they went in pursuit of Lakota who were trying to escape or hide Another citation was for "conspicuous bravery in rounding up and bringing to the skirmish line a stampeded pack mule."
[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre|
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)Gave themselves medals for stealing lives, breaking bodies, minds, hearts, lives.
Then covered it all up in the history they wrote, based on pure fiction.
HoneyBadger
(2,297 posts)Almost half the annual Chicago homicides.....in one day, to put it into perspective.
Pachamama
(16,887 posts)Mahalo Mr President
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,479 posts)SAINT PAUL, December 27, 1862.
The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
I have the honor to inform you that the thirty-eight Indians and half-breeds ordered by you for execution were hung yesterday at Mankato at 10 a.m. Everything went off quietly and the other prisoners are well secured.
Respectfully,
H. H. SIBLEY, Brigadier-General.
Duppers
(28,120 posts)A friend of ours staged and directed an elaborate outdoor reenactment of this a few decades ago. He posted about it on fb and lamented that these battles were "inevitable" because of the clash of cultures.
I replied:
It seems heartless to me to dismiss THIS as being "inevitable." Such is a fucking sad and hopeless commentary on the human psyche. But human greed is indeed so woefully pervasive. It shall be the epitaph and tombstone of homo sapiens.
From the article
"Black Elk, made famous in John Neihardts Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, published in 1961, survived Wounded Knee:
I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A peoples dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . the nations hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.