John Sayer, a Wounded Knee chronicler, wrote that:
"The equipment maintained by the military while in use during the siege included fifteen armored personnel carriers, clothing, rifles, grenade launchers, flares, and 133,000 rounds of ammunition, for a total cost, including the use of maintenance personnel from the National Guard of five states and pilot and planes for aerial photographs, of over half a million dollars".
The data gathered by the historians Record and Hocker largely concur: "barricades of paramilitary personnel armed with automatic weapons, snipers, helicopters, armored personnel carriers equipped with .50-caliber machine guns, and more than 130,000 rounds of ammunition". The statistics on the U.S. government force at Wounded Knee vary, but all accounts agree that it was a significant military force including "federal marshals, FBI agents, and armored vehicles". One eyewitness and journalist described "sniper fire from…federal helicopters", "bullets dancing around in the dirt", and "sounds of shooting all over town" (from both sides).
On March 13, Harlington Wood Jr., the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), became the first government official to enter Wounded Knee without a military escort. Determined to resolve the deadlock without further bloodshed, he met with AIM leaders for days. While exhaustion made him too ill to conclude the negotiation, he is credited as the "icebreaker" between the government and AIM.
After 30 days, the government's tactics became harsher when Kent Frizell was appointed from DOJ to manage the government's response. He cut off electricity, water and food supplies to Wounded Knee, when it was still winter in South Dakota, and prohibited the entry of the media. AIM says that "the government tried starving out the (occupants)", and that its activists smuggled food and medical supplies in past roadblocks "set up by Dick Wilson and tacitly supported by the government". Keefer, the Deputy U.S. Marshal at the scene, said there were no persons between federal agents and the town, and that the federal marshals' firepower would have killed anyone in the open landscape. The Marshals Service decided to wait out the AIM followers in order to reduce casualties on both sides. Some activists organized an airlift of food supplies to Wounded Knee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_incident
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