Wounded Knee Massacre

Dr. Feels 2Good

The story of Wounded Knee December 29, 1890 they do not tell you

Transcript

00:00The Treaty of St. Louis was first signed in 1804 at Portage de Sioux, Missouri, stopping the white man invasion at the Mississippi River.

00:12Then, Western Ho! We kept pushing the natives further into the empty plains and then into the stinking desert.

00:22In the Lakota language, roughly translates to Buffalo Who Sits Down.

00:29Americans came to commonly refer to him as Sitting Bull.

00:33Born in 1830, Sitting Bull fought against the white invasion in the Dakota War of 1862.

00:40He joined Red Cloud's war against the white expansion and refused to surrender when Red Cloud did.

00:48Sitting Bull demonstrated his leadership in the Great Sioux War of 1876.

00:53Gold had been found in the Black Hills, sacred ground promised by the U.S. government again and again and again to the Sioux.

01:04In 1874, George Armstrong Custer led a military expedition to look for promising mining in Fort Sites.

01:12Sitting Bull did not attack that expedition.

01:15Once gold was found, the natives were ordered to give up hunting and move to the reservations.

01:22June 25, 1876

01:26Custer's scouts discovered Sitting Bull's camp along the Little Bighorn River.

01:33Led by Crazy Horse, the natives had one last grand victory over the white man.

01:39Sitting Bull sat on a nearby hilltop, armed with a Winchester carbine and a .45 handgun, watching the entire slaughter.

01:49Custer and 220 of his men perished in what was the worst defeat ever suffered by the United States military at the hands of the Native Americans.

01:59The white people did not like that one bit and sent in many troops hardened by the Civil War with modern weapons and communications.

02:09Sitting Bull refused to submit and escaped with his people to Canada, where the tribe was welcomed with open arms by the Canadians.

02:18Only starvation and hunger and yearning for home, they eventually returned and surrendered.

02:24Sitting Bull surrendered on July 20, 1881.

02:31By 1883, his family was starving on the reservation.

02:35The U.S. government and railroad barons wanted him to speak at the Gold Spike Ceremony for the completion of the Northern Pacific Railway,

02:44the death knell of the Plains, Native Americans, and the Buffalo.

02:48Sitting Bull arrived surrounded by U.S. Calvary to be greeted by governors from every state the Railway connected.

02:58Ambassadors from Europe, the Secretary of State, and President Grant.

03:04Sitting Bull's speech had been written by a young Army officer who spoke Lakota.

03:08Everyone was shocked when Sitting Bull, fluent in English, gave his speech in Lakota.

03:16He said in Lakota, which only the single soldier could understand,

03:20I hate all white people, he said.

03:24You are thieves and liars.

03:27You have taken away our land and made us outcasts.

03:30He went on to describe all the atrocities that his nation had endured at the hands of the United States.

03:39He would stop periodically to smile, and the audience applauded enthusiastically,

03:44assuming he was welcoming them and complimenting them their great achievement.

03:51Sitting Bull would bow and return,

03:53then resume his scathing assessment of the white man's corruption and dishonesty.

03:58Only the panic-stricken Army officer who had helped Sitting Bull draft a speech could understand him,

04:05and he knew it was pointless to interrupt.

04:08Sitting Bull received a standing ovation at the end of his speech,

04:13White folk, none the wiser.

04:16It did bring him to the attention of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.

04:20Sitting Bull made a great deal of money selling selfies performing with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show,

04:26reenacting the Little Bighorn battle.

04:30He became very fond of and very close to Annie Oakley.

04:33Sitting Bull was famous for giving away all his wealth and gifts to the needy.

04:41He quickly tired of the showbiz life,

04:44finding it unfathomable that white people begged on the streets of large cities.

04:49Sitting Bull returned to the reservation just as a new spiritual movement was beginning among the natives.

04:55The ghost dance was a Paiute shaman prophecy with a little Mormonism thrown in

05:02that by dancing and praying, the natives could chase away the white man and the buffalo would return.

05:10They believed Jesus was resurrected to leave the natives and chase off the white invasion.

05:15They would hold ghost dance circles,

05:18wearing sacred shirts they believed would stop the white man's bullets.

05:22The whites in charge of the reservations recognized the dangers of a resurrection cult

05:28and feared another native uprising.

05:31They decided to take Sitting Bull into custody to prevent any uprising.

05:36During his arrest, Sitting Bull was killed when his followers resisted.

05:39Pre-dawn, December 15, 1890, 43 Native Reservation Police, themselves members of the Sioux tribe,

05:50who were dubbed metal tits because of the badges they wore,

05:55surrounded the house of Sitting Bull, led by Lieutenant Henry Bullhead.

06:00One of Sitting Bull's men's raised his rifle and shot at Lieutenant Bullhead,

06:06who fired his revolver into Sitting Bull's chest.

06:09Another native officer, Red Tomahawk, shot Sitting Bull in the head.

06:15Killed were Sitting Bull, his brother Jumping Bull, and his son Crowfoot,

06:21who would vainly cry out,

06:22My uncles, do not kill me, I do not wish to die,

06:27before being bludgeoned over the head and shot.

06:30The incident would later become known as the Battle in the Dark.

06:36Two weeks later, on December 29, 1890,

06:40the Sioux of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota

06:43were ordered to surrender all weapons

06:45by over 500 revenge-hungry members of the 7th Cavalry,

06:50still fuming about Little Bighorn eight years earlier,

06:54and armed with the latest weapon of mass destruction,

06:57the Hotchkiss,

06:59an improved version of the U.S. Gatling gun,

07:02capable of firing over 60 rounds per minute

07:05with an accuracy of over 2,000 yards.

07:09Against 350 half-starved and freezing Lakota,

07:13less than half of them were male.

07:17They were mostly women and children.

07:20One death Lakota argued to keep his new expensive Winchester rifle.

07:26Two soldiers grabbed him from behind,

07:29and his gun went off,

07:30followed by a rain of shooting down unarmed Lakota.

07:34The women ran the children into a ravine to protect them,

07:39and the soldiers encircled and killed every one of them.

07:42Everyone was hunted down and killed.

07:46For days, the corpses lay in a blizzard.

07:49The Army hired workers to dig a mass grave.

07:53Over 300 Lakota lay dead in the snow.

07:57Army casualties numbered 25,

07:59most killed by friendly fire of the Hotchkisses.

08:02The 1890 campaign to exterminate the natives

08:07led to 31 U.S. Medals of Honor.

08:1119 Medals of Honor went to the service at Wounded Knee.

08:16To this day, America's worst mass shooting.

08:24American Horse was an Oglala Lakota chief.

08:27He was 50 years old during the time of Wounded Knee.

08:31He lived until 1908.

08:33He was an eyewitness.

08:35There was a woman with an infant in her arms

08:41who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce.

08:45A mother was shot down with her infant.

08:48The child, not knowing that its mother was dead,

08:50was still nursing.

08:53The women, as they were fleeing with their babies,

08:55were killed together,

08:57shot right through the baby.

08:58And after most of all of them had been killed,

09:03a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded

09:06should come forth and they would be safe.

09:10Little boys came out of their places of refuge.

09:14And as soon as they came in sight,

09:16a number of soldiers surrounded them

09:18and butchered them there.

09:20Yeah.

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