Wounded Knee Massacre - U.S. 7th Cavalry Kills 250+ Lakota, Primarily Women and Children, Ending Ghost Dance Movement

The U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounds a band of Lakota Sioux Ghost Dancers under Chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and massacres over 250 Lakota people, primarily unarmed women, children, and elders. The 7th Cavalry—the same unit decimated at Little Bighorn in 1876—demands that the Lakota surrender their weapons during a period of heightened military tension over the Ghost Dance religious movement. As soldiers attempt to disarm the Lakota, a scuffle breaks out and a shot is fired (the origin remaining unclear), triggering the Cavalry to open fire with rifles and Hotchkiss guns on the largely unarmed Lakota camp. Artillery rakes the encampment, cutting down men, women, and children indiscriminately. Many Lakota flee but are pursued and killed up to two miles from the camp. The massacre occurs in freezing winter conditions, with bodies of victims later found frozen in the snow. The U.S. government awards 20 Medals of Honor to soldiers for their actions at Wounded Knee—the most ever awarded for a single engagement—despite the “battle” consisting primarily of killing unarmed civilians, illustrating how military honors can be perverted to celebrate atrocities.

The Wounded Knee Massacre represents the violent suppression of the Ghost Dance movement, a spiritual revival that the U.S. government perceives as a threat to its authority and assimilation policies. The Ghost Dance movement first appears in Nevada around 1870 and gains widespread popularity among the Lakota after its 1889 revival by Paiute prophet Wovoka. The religion’s adherents believe that participating in ritual circular dances will usher in a utopian future in which a spiritual transformation will destroy white colonization, resurrect deceased ancestors, restore buffalo herds, and return stolen lands to Indigenous peoples. The movement is fundamentally peaceful and spiritual, offering hope to Native Americans suffering from disease, starvation, broken treaties, land theft, and cultural destruction on reservations. However, U.S. government officials ban Ghost Dance ceremonies on the Pine Ridge Reservation, viewing the movement as threatening to federal control and the assimilation agenda. The federal government mobilizes the largest military deployment since the Civil War to suppress a religious movement, demonstrating the use of military force to crush Indigenous spiritual resistance alongside physical resistance.

Government suppression of the Ghost Dance begins with the killing of Sitting Bull on December 15, 1890, when reservation police—acting on federal orders—attempt to arrest the famous Lakota chief, whom authorities mistakenly believe to be a Ghost Dance leader. Sitting Bull is killed during the arrest attempt, dramatically increasing tensions at Pine Ridge and triggering Big Foot’s band to seek protection. The Wounded Knee Massacre two weeks later effectively ends the Ghost Dance movement and marks the final major military confrontation in America’s decades-long war against Plains Indians. The massacre illustrates a pattern where the U.S. government responds to Indigenous religious and cultural movements that resist assimilation with military violence rather than religious tolerance. In 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announces that the 20 Medals of Honor awarded for Wounded Knee will not be revoked, calling the recipients “brave soldiers” and declaring “this decision is now final” and “their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate.” The National Congress of American Indians responds that this choice “disregards the historical record of the brutal, unprovoked, and wrongful massacre of the Lakota by the United States 7th Cavalry and the moral imperative to confront injustice with honesty and courage.” Wounded Knee exemplifies institutional corruption operating through military violence: a peaceful religious movement is criminalized, military force is deployed to suppress spiritual expression, the resulting massacre of civilians is rewarded with the nation’s highest military honors, and over a century later the government still refuses to revoke those honors—illustrating how institutions can celebrate atrocities when victims are Indigenous peoples and perpetrators serve the broader project of territorial conquest and cultural destruction.