This Week In History - Wounded Knee

Transcript:

As we celebrate the Holidays we love taking time to tolerate family, give heartfelt gifts, and donate a little extra to the food pantry. Not all of the season has been cheer and reindeer, though. As we make hopeful plans and resolutions for the future, we first have to reflect on hard truths about the past that can leave us determined to move forward in a more positive direction. Today, we’re going back to December 29, 1890, to memorialize the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

But first, a highly simplified backstory: 

American settlers arrived in Virginia in 1604, and things quickly grew complicated with the Native American tribes in a fight for land, resources, and labor. At first, natives had tried to show the new colonists how to fend for themselves, but colonists quickly turned to false treaties and forced labor to conquer the land and make up for their lack of early survival skills. Fast forward through the American Revolution over the 1700s, the Declaration of Independence signed in 1776, and the Constitution of the United States signed in 1787. The Bill of Rights was completed and ratified by 1789, acknowledging our basic human rights and freedoms, including our freedoms of speech, right to bear arms, right to privacy (especially from the military), and right to a fair trial. By this time, many native American tribes in these areas had already been pushed out of their land, slaughtered, assimilated, or traded into slavery by the colonists. 

By the 1800s, the Manifest Destiny worldview had circulated among the colonies– the idea was that their divine destiny would be to conquer the land further west, spreading their religion and way of life. Native Americans who had taken care of the land for centuries tried to protect their villages from exploitation, but inferior weapons and exposure to new diseases made it impossible for them to survive without relying on the colonists – who brutally razed their villages, killed their women and children, imprisoned them and sent them to small reservations where they were forced into labor, starved, forcibly assimilated, and greatly mistreated. Still, small villages remained in parts of the wilderness, and among these reservations – living off of the land and doing their best to survive.

When all hope felt lost, rumors began to spread of a Christ incarnate, a Paiute man named Wovoka. Many natives believed he was a Messiah who would lead them out of their desperate circumstance. He taught non-violence and loving-kindness. He taught them a dance in prayer of renewal, believing God would come to make things better. Fearing that soldiers might try to stop this by force, people began to wear Ghost shirts while they danced. These shirts were rumored to have magical powers that would protect the wearer even from a soldier’s bullets. This gave them the confidence to continue their dancing in practice of their new religion.

Many people performed the Ghost Dance for days at a time. As the movement became more popular, droves of dancers began neglecting their imposed duties to dance in protest and prayer of liberation from their captors. The U.S. federal government began to worry about the resistance, as they began to dance in snow and through starvation. The federal government ordered all natives to stop dancing, afraid of potential escalation. When this order was not heeded, the government became alarmed and sent soldiers to arrest the chiefs that were allowing the dances to continue.

Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, a former federal agent who was asked for advice on how to resolve the matter, really tried to object to military intervention. In the book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, an account of the events leading up to the massacre, he is quoted as saying, “If the Seventh-Day Adventists prepare their ascension robes for the second coming of the Savior, the US Army is not put in motion to prevent them. Why shouldn’t the Indians have the same privilege? If the troops remain, trouble is sure to come.”

And it did. US Soldiers killed the Hunkpapa chief Sitting Bull in front of his people when they tried to resist his arrest. When Chief Big Foot of the Miniconjou tribe heard of this, he tried to escape with his people. Unfortunately, on December 29, 1890, US soldiers caught up with the band and filtered them down to Wounded Knee Creek.

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Their orders were to disarm the natives. The natives complied and gave up their guns, but their tents were also searched and stripped of their tools, including knives and axes that they needed to survive. When this wasn’t enough, the US Soldiers ordered each person to be stripped and searched, where two natives were still found to be carrying rifles. One of the men, Black Coyote, was angry. He had spent a lot of money on his weapon and knew that he had the right to keep it. When he resisted, a wrestle ensued that ended in his rifle being fired. The military responded with more gunfire.

Remember, all of these people had just been disarmed. As the entire band of unarmed natives ran for their lives, they continued shooting women and children indiscriminately. Louise Weasel Bear recounts, “We tried to run, but they shot us like we were buffalo.” At the end of the massacre, 153 native Americans had been killed. Survivors were loaded into wagons and taken to Pine Ridge, where they were left dying and freezing in wagons for hours before they found a shelter at an Episcopal church. The total death count of the massacre was 300 of the 350 Miniconjou Lakota Sioux that originally fled to preserve their human rights.

Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee ends its pages with poetic and disturbing imagery. “It was the fourth day after Christmas in the Year of Our Lord 1890,” it reads. “When the first torn and bleeding bodies were carried into the candlelit church, those who were conscious could see Christmas greenery hanging from the open rafters. Across the chancel front above the pulpit was strung a crudely lettered banner: PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN.”

This tragic day in history exposes some of the darkest truths we face as humans. 

It exposes an America that is unfortunately rooted in discrimination and double standards. It shows us how greed and entitlement can inspire inhuman acts that we should never justify. It demonstrates the insecurity that those in power suffer when their power is built on the oppression of others because when those oppressed people stand up for a single cause or begin to feel a sense of hope that calls them to action, even peaceful action like dance, it threatens the dynamic of power and control that we have been groomed to submit to. The US government was so afraid of losing their power to natives, that native language and religious dancing were banned until the 1930s.

This is not only a historical US phenomenon, although it is escalating again here in America through the use of ICE agents who are kidnapping humans, both citizens and immigrants, without due process, and sometimes sending them to camps in places they’ve never been. In North Korea, real food is considered elite, while those in poverty who work tirelessly continue to see bagged ramen as a luxury because food is so scarce among the poor. In Afghanistan, women can legally be killed for singing, talking, or even being close to a window. Elites worldwide have found this historical pattern to keep people under their thumb, because without their unsteady sense of power over others they have nothing.

So as we gather together with our families to celebrate peace on earth and good will towards men this year, take a moment to ask yourself: What does that really look like? How can we find the compassion to reach out to people or communities who are struggling to survive because of discrimination, rising costs of living, or any other of the complicated systems that are designed to keep us all indentured to them? And what can we do this year to ensure that next Christmas, there is a more equitable view ahead of us, where everyone is valued and considered in the pursuit of happiness?

Thank you for following me through this week’s history. If you want to support Elements of Us, please consider making a one-time donation through Venmo, or subscribing to our Patreon. Every dollar goes toward making this show possible, and taking it to new heights. We appreciate your support.

Sources:

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee : An Indian History of the American West. 1970.  Fall River Press, 1970.

HY89 Studio. “The Ghost Dance Movement: A Turning Point in Native American Resistance and Culture.” YouTube, 21 Oct. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD1Q-XHDT_E.

Library of Congress. “The American Revolution, 1763 - 1783 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress.” Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA,

www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/american-revolution-1763-1783/.