Wounded Knee Massacre

U.S. troops surrounding the Indians near Wounded Knee Creek. 1890.

The photographer captures the exposed tribe faced between the approaching cavalry and the canyon.

On December 29^th, 1890 the United States 7^th Cavalry approached a camp of Sioux Indians on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in an attempt to fully disarm the group. This due in part to an increasing fear of an uprising inspired by the Ghost Dance movement. However, a shot was fired and chaos ensued. The cavalry indiscriminately fired on men, women, and children murdering over 150 people while suffering minimal losses.

Source: The American Indian. Warren K. Moorehead. (above)

“Mooney says ‘the guns poured in two-pound explosive shells at the rate of fifty per minute, mowing down everything alive… There can be no question that the pursuit was simply a massacre, where fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground’.”