Snapshot · Empire: World History
As many as 350 Lakota — mostly women, children, and unarmed men — were slaughtered by the 7th Cavalry on December 29, 1890, in what is considered the last military engagement of the American Indian Wars.
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Fifteen years after Little Bighorn, the US military was jumpy about the Ghost Dance — a spiritual movement spreading across the Great Plains that the American military feared was galvanising the Lakota. The 7th Cavalry, Custer's own regiment, was posted around Pine Ridge Reservation. In brutal December cold, a group of Lakota led by Spotted Elk were trying to reach the safety of Pine Ridge under Red Cloud's protection. They were mostly women, children, and unarmed men. Surrounded by the cavalry, as soldiers attempted to disarm the few who had weapons, a gun accidentally discharged and the massacre began. As many as 350 Lakota were killed. In the aftermath, the US Army awarded 20 soldiers Medals of Honor for their actions — awards that stood until the Biden administration revoked them, only for the Trump administration to re-award them. Davis characterises Wounded Knee as the transition from military conflict to cultural and historical conflict, marking the beginning of forced assimilation.
On December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry — Custer's old regiment — surrounded a group of Lakota mostly composed of women, children, and unarmed men. When a gun accidentally discharged, the massacre began: as many as 350 Lakota were killed. The US Army awarded 20 soldiers Medals of Honor for the slaughter — medals revoked under Biden and then re-awarded under Trump.
South Dakota's first state historian, Doane Robinson, conceived of Mount Rushmore in 1923 not as a monument to democracy but as a tourist attraction to rescue his state's tanking economy. South Dakota was experiencing its own Great Depression a decade before the rest of America. Robinson initially wanted to carve Red Cloud — the Lakota chief who had actually defeated the US in war — into nearby granite spires called the Needles.
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