Wounded Knee :: American America History

Wounded KneeWounded Knee was a terrible event in US history. It showed how the US g everyplacenment didnt understand the Native Americans and treated them badly and unfairly.Big beak was the chief of a subtribe of the Lakota c all(prenominal)ed Miniconjou. He was very old and had pneumonia. He was fetching his tribe to the Pine Ridge Reservation in south-western South Dakota. Most of the women and children in Big Foots tribe were family members of the warriors who had died in the Plains wars. The Indians had agreed to live on downcast reservations after the US government took away their land. At the Wounded Knee camp, there were 120 men and 230 women and children. At the camp, they were guarded by the US 7th Cavalry lead by Major Samuel Whitside. During the year 1890 a revolutionary dance called the jot Dance started among the Sioux and other tribes. The Siouxs Christ figure, Wovoka, was said to have flown over Sitting Bull and Short Bull and taught them the dance and the songs . The Ghost Dance legend was that the next spring, when the grass was high, the Earth would be covered with a new layer of soil, covering all white men. Wild buffalo and horses would return and there would be swift running water, sweet grass, and new trees. All Indians who danced the Ghost dance would be floating in the air when the new soil was being laid down and would be saved. The Ghost Dance was made black after the Wounded Knee massacre though. On December 28, 1890 the Seventh Cavalry saw Big Foot moving his tribe and Big Foot immediately put up a white flag. Major Samuel Whitside captured the Indians and took them to an army camp near the Pine Ridge reservation at Wounded Knee. Whitside took Bigfoot on his wagon because it was more comfortable and warmer, and Big Foot was sick. Whitside had orders to take the Indians to a military prison in Omaha the next day, but it never happened. That night Colonel pack W. Forsyth took over. The Cavalry provided the Indians with tents th at night because it was cold and there was a blizzard coming. The next day, December 29, 1890, the Cavalry gave the Indians hardtack for breakfast. There was a seize of arms and the soldiers took all the Indians guns away. A medicine man named Yellow Bird told the Indians to resist the soldiers and not give up the guns, he did a few steps of the Ghost Dance.