Wounded Knee Massacre

Introduction

The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as The Battle at Wounded Knee Creek, was the last major armed conflict between the Lakota Sioux and the United States, subsequently described as a "massacre" by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. It happened on December, 29, 1890 for different reasons.

Lakota Prelude

In February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota an area that formerly encompassed the majority of the state, into five relatively smaller reservations. This was done to accommodate homesteaders from the east and was in accordance with the government’s policy of “breaking up tribal relationships” and "conforming Indians to the white man’s ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must". Once on the half-sized reservations, tribes were separated into family units on 320 acre plots, forced to farm, raise livestock, and send their children to that forbade any inclusion of traditional Native American culture and language. To support the Sioux during the period of transition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was delegated the responsibility of supplying the Sioux – traditionally a hunter-gatherer society – with food, and hiring white farmers to teach them agriculture. The farming plan failed to take into account the difficulty Sioux farmers would have in trying to cultivate crops in the semi-arid region of South Dakota. By the end of the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was unable to produce substantial agricultural yields. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the government’s patience with supporting the so-called “lazy Indians” ran out. Rations to the Sioux were cut in half. With the American bison virtually eradicated from the plains a few years earlier, the Sioux began to starve. There were also incomprehension between USA and