“Wounded Knee”
By Toni Truesdale
Just after Christmas, 1890, a group of Minneconjou Sioux
camped close to Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
They were led by Big Foot, who was very ill with pneumonia.
The tribe had just come through the Badlands with great difficulty.
It was frigid. The very air froze on the breath of the
people.
Big Foot traveled in a wagon with a white flag.
He had hoped to join Red Cloud at Pine Ridge
to protect his people from the U.S. Calvary.
Major Whitside caught up with him on December 28.
He took the small band to camp at a creek called Wounded
Knee.
The morning of the 29th, Colonial Forsyth, from Custer’s old
regiment,
Proceeded to harass the Minneconjou men while looking for
weapons.
A Young Man, Black Coyote, was trying to put his hunting
rifle down.
The soldiers grabbed him and roughed him up.
Suddenly, there was a sound like a gunshot.
No one is really sure if it was a gun or who fired it. The
soldiers didn’t investigate,
They opened fire instead.
The Minneconjou had been disarmed, they had only a few
knives and clubs.
There was a brief struggle.
Then all the Minneconjou started to run from the big
Hotchkiss guns
stationed on the hill above aiming at all the women and
children.
It didn’t take long to kill nearly three hundred of the
Sioux band.
Only a few soldiers died; mostly by friendly fire in the
killing frenzy.
The people were buried in a huge mass grave, dug into the
frozen ground.
Together in a mass grave, their bodies were contorted in the
agony of violent death.
Big Foot’s band still remain at Wounded Knee
to testify silently on the depopulation techniques of the
U.S. Government.
The Mass murder was legal,
The soldiers awarded the “Medal of Honor”.
