Never Forget
The Moon When the Deer Shed Their Horns
Chankpe Opi Wakpala
On this day in 1890, December 29, over 200 Sioux men, women and children are massacred by the United States military at what is popularly known as Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
It is the probably the best known event in the American Holocaust and is generally considered the final, decisive event in the “Indian Wars.”
Big Foot, ill with pneumonia and hemorrhaging, flies the white flag over his wagon while attempting to lead his people and fleeing Hunkpapas to safety at Pine Ridge. But during this journey, he is intercepted by Major Samuel Whitside of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry and directed to Wounded Knee.
He complies without incident.
120 men and 230 women and children make the journey to the creek called Chankpe Opi Wakpala, followed by a battery of two Hotchkiss guns. After arrival at camp, the guns are moved to a rise overlooking the camp and two more are added.
One model of the Hotchkiss gun is a mounted, revolving cannon with five 37-mm barrels, capable of firing 43 rounds per minute with an accuracy range of 2,000 yards. A caption of a photograph showing the soldiers and their guns reads:
“Famous Battery “K” of the 1st Artillery.These brave men and the Hotchkiss guns that Big Foot’s Indians thought were toys, Together with the fighting 7th what’s left of Gen. Custer’s boys, Sent 200 Indians to that Heaven which the ghost dancer enjoys. This checked the Indian noise, And Gen. Miles with staff Returned to Illinois.”
During the night, the remainder of the Seventh Regiment, lead by Colonel James W. Forsyth moves into camp. Upon arrival, he informs Whitside he has orders to take Big Foot and his people by train to a military prison in Omaha.
Forsyth is a key figure in the massacre, because he has personal motives to “settle a score.” In September 1968, his elite ranger unit (on a mission to track and kill Cheyennes) was trapped, humiliated and nearly wiped out by a group of Dog Soldiers led by Roman Nose. He was rescued by an African-American regiment known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.”
The next morning, the men are directed to come to the center of the camp for a “talk.” At this point, Big Foot and his people are informed they will be disarmed. The Sioux comply with the order.
Not satisfied, the soldiers decide to conduct a search of the tepees and blankets. The indignity is only mildly protested by the medicine man Yellow Bird, who defiantly dances a few Ghost Dance steps.
Two additional rifles are found, one belonging to a young Minneconjou named Black Coyote. Black Coyote is deaf.
A loud sound is heard, and the soldiers believe Black Coyote has fired his weapon. But this is not clear.
A few of the Sioux try to fight back after the U.S. soldiers open fire. Others flee for safety. Unarmed women and children are shot and killed as they run for the creek bed.
At least 153 are known dead. One estimate places the final total close to 300. Most of the twenty-five soldiers killed, are felled by their own bullets and shrapnel.
A blizzard approaches and the Sioux dead are left were they fell. A burial party later returns and dumps the frozen bodies in a mass grave.
Chankpe Opi Wakpala is a massacre. A genocidal act carried out by agents of the United States government. It marks the end of the Sioux as a free people living freely upon their land.
“…I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and it was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream…the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”- Black Elk
“The nobility of the Redskin is extinguished…the Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they should die than live the miserable wretches that they are.”- L. Frank Baum, Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (also the author of the Wizard of Oz)
Estimates of how many native people lived in the Americas during the 15th century range from a low of 8.4 million to as high as 112.5 million persons. The most realistic estimates are between 20 and 35 million persons. It is estimated that over the centuries of European colonization about 2 million to 15 million American indigenous people were victims of deliberate acts of genocide, disease (sometimes via deliberate infection) and exploitation.
Why is it important we never forget? It’s important because societies that deny or forget their past sins tend to repeat them. And that’s certainly the case with the United States.
The United States is the number one exporter of terror on the planet, carrying out global atrocities through direct force, proxy forces and diplomacy. As a society, we’re in complete denial about our true national identity. Our nation has a false consciousness, one that can only be corrected through education of the ignorant.
It’s ridiculous to say “Yes, we fucked up. We’re sorry.” And the reason is we’re still fucking up. In South America. In East Timor. In Iraq. In Palestine. On our own continent via the deliberate and systematic destruction of habitat for non-humans.
But don’t hold your breath and expect any big changes any time soon. Even with a Democratic Congress. Even a Democratic President. The reason is America is subservient to the law of capital and its expansion. Anything that gets in the way of profit is an anathema. Ecosystems, non-humans, humans. It doesn’t matter.
Thanks to a recent attack on the Constitution, people that stand in the way or ask to many questions stand the risk of being rounded up for “talks.” Just like the Sioux, we’re inhibiting progress. And we all know how that turned out.
Sources:
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
A Little Matter of Genocide, Ward Churchill