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Remember Wounded Knee?

Faster horses

Well-known member
A Lesson to be Learned on the Anniversary of Wounded Knee

December 29, 2012 marked the 122nd Anniversary of the murder of 297 Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. These 297 people, in their winter camp, were murdered by federal agents and members of the 7th Cavalry who had come to confiscate their firearms “for their own safety and protection”. The slaughter began AFTER the majority of the Sioux had peacefully turned in their firearms. When the final round had flown, of the 297 dead or dying, two thirds (200) were women and children.

Around 40 members of the 7th Cavalry were killed, over half cut down by friendly fire from the Hotchkiss guns of their overzealous comrades-in-arms. Twenty members of the 7th Cavalry were deemed “National Heros” and awarded the Medal of Honor for their acts of cowardice.



We do not hear of Wounded Knee today. It is not mentioned in our history classes or books. What little does exist about Wounded Knee is normally the sanitized “Official Government Explanation” or the historically and factually inaccurate depictions of the events leading up to the massacre on the movie screen.

Wounded Knee was among the first federally backed gun confiscation attempts in United States history. It ended in the senseless murder of 297 people.

Before you jump on the emotionally charged bandwagon for gun-control, take a moment to reflect on the real purpose of the Second Amendment- The right of the people to take up arms in defense of themselves, their families, and property in the face of invading armies or an oppressive government. The argument that the Second Amendment only applies to hunting and target shooting is asinine. When the United States Constitution was drafted “hunting” was an everyday chore carried out by men and women to put meat on the table each night, and “target shooting” was an unheard of concept, musket balls were a precious commodity in the wilds of early America, and were certainly not wasted “target shooting”. The Second Amendment was written by people who fled oppressive and tyrannical regimes in Europe, and refers to the right of American citizens to be armed for defense purposes should such tyranny rise in the United States.

As time goes on the average citizen in the United States continues to lose personal freedom or “liberty”. Far too many times unjust bills are passed and signed into law under the guise of “for your safety” or “for protection”. The Patriot Act signed into law by G.W. Bush, then expanded and continued by Barack Obama is just one of many examples of American citizens being stripped of their rights and privacy for “safety”. Now, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is on the table, and will, most likely be taken away for “our safety”.

Before any American citizen blindly accepts whatever new firearms legislation that is about to be doled out, they should stop and think about something for just one minute-
Evil does exist in our world. It always has and always will. Throughout history evil people have committed evil acts. In the Bible one of the first stories is that of Cain killing Abel. We can not legislate “evil” into extinction. Good people will abide by the law, defective people will always find a way around it.

And another thought Evil exists all around us, but looking back at the historical record of the past 200 years across the globe, where is “evil” and “malevolence” most often found? In the hands of those with the power- governments. That greatest human tragedies on record and the largest loss of innocent human life can be attributed to governments. Who do governments target? “Scapegoats” and “enemies” within their own borders…but only after they have been disarmed to the point where they are no longer a threat. Ask any Native American, and they will tell you it was inferior technology and lack of arms that contributed to their demise. Ask any Armenian why it was so easy for the Turks to exterminate millions of them, and they will answer “We were disarmed before it happened”. Ask any Jew what Hitler’s first step prior to the mass murders of the Holocaust was- confiscation of firearms from the people.

Wounded Knee is the prime example of why the Second Amendment exists, and why we shouldn’t be in such a hurry to surrender our Right to Bear Arms. Without the Second Amendment we have no right to defend ourselves and our families.

(Yes, it was an email.)
 

Steve

Well-known member
there are alot of versions..

The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment arrived led by Colonel James Forsyth and surrounded the encampment supported by four Hotchkiss guns.[5]

On the morning of December 29, the troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events claims that during the process of disarming the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle, claiming he had paid a lot for it

"As regards disarming the Sioux, however desirable it may appear, I consider it neither advisable, nor practicable. I fear it will result as the theoretical enforcement of prohibition in Kansas, Iowa and Dakota; you will succeed in disarming and keeping disarmed the friendly Indians because you can, and you will not succeed with the mob element because you cannot."

"If I were again to be an Indian Agent, and had my choice, I would take charge of 10,000 armed Sioux in preference to a like number of disarmed ones; and furthermore agree to handle that number, or the whole Sioux nation, without a white soldier. Respectfully, etc., V.T. McGillycuddy.

how little has changed over the years... and like then few men of wisdom are left or listened to...

The troopers surrounded Spotted Elk's encampment and set up four rapid fire Hotchkiss guns.[16] At daybreak on December 29, 1890, Col. Forsyth ordered the surrender of weapons and the immediate removal and transportation of the Indians from the "zone of military operations" to awaiting trains. A search of the camp confiscated 38 rifles and more rifles were taken as the soldiers searched the Indians. None of the old men were found to be armed. Yellow Bird harangued the young men who were becoming agitated by the search and the tension spread to the soldiers.

According to some accounts, a medicine man named Yellow Bird began to perform the Ghost Dance, reiterating his assertion to the Lakota that the ghost shirts were bulletproof. As tension mounted, Black Coyote refused to give up his rifle; he was deaf and had not understood the order. Another Indian said: "Black Coyote is deaf." (He did not speak English). When the soldier refused to heed his warning, he said, "Stop! He cannot hear your orders!" At that moment, two soldiers seized Black Coyote from behind, and in the struggle (allegedly), his rifle discharged.

According to commanding Gen. Nelson A. Miles, a "scuffle occurred between one warrior who had [a] rifle in his hand and two soldiers. The rifle was discharged and a battle occurred, not only the warriors but the sick Chief Spotted Elk, and a large number of women and children who tried to escape by running and scattering over the prairie were hunted down and killed.

At first the struggle was fought at close range; fully half the Indian men were killed or wounded before they had a chance to get off any shots. Some of the Indians grabbed rifles they had been hiding and opened fire on the soldiers. With no cover, and with many of the Sioux unarmed, this phase of the fighting lasted a few minutes at most.

it is a bit to late to learn from history.. but by the laws enacted in New York.. it is clear that the government no longer is a republic, nor respects the Constitution..

I guess if treaties never mattered.. then why would a piece of paper stop them now...
 

Martin Jr.

Well-known member
Before we jump to conclusions here is something that should be read:

After the death of Sitting Bull, several hundred skirrish Standing Rock Hunkpapas fled toward the Cheyenne River Reservation. Concerned that they might join the dancers in the Stronghold, Agent James McLaughlin's envoys managed to coax most of them back to Standing Rock. About a hundred continued south, intending to join up with Big Foot, chief of the Miniconjous, who was on his way to Pine Ridge agency with a band of some 350 men, women and children.

On Sunday, 28 December, Craft learned that Big Foot's band had been intercepted and was camped on Wounded Knee Creek, where Col. James W. Forsyth, commander of the famous Seventh Cavalry, planned to disarm them. Gen. John R. Brooke, directing the operation from Pine Ridge Agency, was well aware of the favorable influence any Black Robe would have over restless Indians. Earlier that month he had sent Father John Jutz, the Jesuit missionary at Holy Rosary Mission, to negotiate with Two Strike and others in the Stronghold. Jutz brought the Sicangu chief back to the agency for a council with Brooke, and by mid-December almost a thousand of his people had come in peaceably. Brooke hoped Father Craft could be similarly persuasive in the disarming of the Big Foot's band.

In company with Colonel Forsyth, some soldiers, and a few civilian spectators, Craft arrived at Wounded Knee near midnight on 28 December. In the morning he circulated among the Indians as Forsyth explained the procedure for disarming. The Colonel had assembed the male Indains on an expanse of ground between the military camp and the Indian Camp. The Indian camp formed a loose cresent on the south, with the military tents in tight formation opposite them. On the east flank, Forsyth stationed a troop of mounted cavalry; between the Indians and their camp he put B and K troops, behind them a row of Taylor's Indian scouts, and beyond them another rank of mounted cavalry. Cemetery Hill, two hundred yards to the west, afforded a commanding view of the whole scene there, following standard deployment procedures, he placed a battery of four Hotchkiss guns. More mounted troops on either side of the battery closed off the perimeter. Forthyth's total command numbered approximately 500 men, armed with single-shot Remington rifles, some had Colt revolvers.

These were close quarters for such an assemblage - maybe one hundred yards across, a little less between the two camps. Boxed in this arena were about 120 Indian men; 320 of their women and children remained in camp.

This was the setting for what today is almost universally considered a massacre; reckless and outrageous slaughter of unarmed Indian men, women and chldren by vengful white troops of the Seventh Cavalry. What happened there has been so revised, rewritten, and distorted in the retelling that recent accounts suggest Big Foot's Miniconjous stood helpless and bewildered as they were given the last rites by an unnamed Black Robe. These latest versions imply that the command to fire was withheld until after the priest had administered this symbolic version of extreme unction, the last sacrament of the Catholic Church, to the assembled Indians.

Father Craft, always his own best defense, provided detailed eyewitness accounts of the battle. One such report was in a deposition submitted to the federal commission charged with investigating the tragic event. Others were in letters to James E. Kelly, an artist friend who converted Craft's verbal descriptons into sketches.

Father Craft first put to rest any thought that Big Foot's band of Indians was simply a displaced group of peaceable Innocents. "[These} ...Indians with whom I was speaking were the worst element of their Agency, whose camp has for years been the rendeavous of all the worst characters on the Sioux Reservation," he wrote.

About 8:30 in the morning, Colonel Forsyth spoke through an interpreter, "Kindly and pleasantly." according to the priest, as he explained the necessity of the Indians' surrendering their guns. Big Foot and others denied there were any weapons, saying all their guns had been burned up. Forsyth, though, reminded them that only the day before every man had been seen to have a least one firearm. The Indians were then directed to return to their camp, a few at a time, to retrieve any weapons. Again they denied having any. Forsyth then sent troopers into the Indian camp to search for and collect any guns, but they returned with very few.

A medicine man began praying and singing, circling around the Indians, preparing them for death and invoking sacred protection from the white man's bullets. At the same time, a soldier noticed guns under the Indians' blankets. The Indians were then directed to come forward, one by one, to open their blankets and lay down their arms.

Fifteen or twenty guns had been collected when a trooper cried out. "Look out," "Look at that" as he caught a glimpse of rifles hidden beneath the Indians' robes. Craft tried to reassure them but few listened to him. Nervous laughter broke out from both sides. Forsyth lightheartedly tried to beguile the Indians as he asked them again to come forward one by one and surrender the guns, "saying he would not take them by force if he had to wait ten years."

Craft circulated among the Indians, passing out cigarettes to calm them. Suddenly several threw aside their blankets, raised their guns, and leveled them at the lines of B and K troops. most had twelve-shot Winchester repeating rifles. The priest ran along the Indians' lines, urging them to stop. Lt. W.W. Robinson, Jr. also rode up from behind the Indians to talk to them. There was still a chance to avoid bloodshed as the Indians laughed and began to lower their rifles, when a deaf brave named Black Fox, unable to comprehend all that was happening, fired off a round.

"The next second," wrote Craft, "the Indians ... poured volley after volley into the lines of B and K Troops, their fire also mowing down like grass the crowd of their own women and children who stood looking on behind the soldiers... The Soldiers did not fire until they were actually compelled to, and after the Indians had fired many shots."

A major reason for the military's delayed response was that their ill conceived formation had placed their comrades in their line of fire. If Wounded Knee was a massace, it surely did not begin with that intent in mind.

The Indians broke in to small parties, charging back and forth, firing as they ran, desperately trying to breach the ranks of soldiers that surrounded them. Some broke through them toward the south, and as they passed the Indian camp many of the women and children ran out with them. The Hotchkiss battery opened upon them as they crossed the agency road. It was impossible, said Craft, for the Hotchkiss artillery to distinguish between males, who were still firing backward as they ran, and the women and children who joined them. Others sought the protection of a ravine, from which they continued their lethal assault. In reply, the battery raked the ravine with explosive shells almost one per second.

Scouts called to the women and children to lie down, but few obeyed, and the soldiers sought to move them from harm's way to the cavalry camp. "Many soldiers were shot down doing this." wrote Craft. As the battle ended, a few Indians who had reached the Indian Camp resumed firing. An interpreter who went to stop them was fired on prompting another artillery barrage, but by then most of the women and children had alrady left or had been removed from the camp.

The clattering enfilade filled the air with swirling clouds of noxious smoke as Father Craft exhorted several Indians to lie flat. One grabbed his long winter overcoat, causing the priest to literally drag the man around with him. A mortally wounded soldier named James E. Kelly staggered into them, blood pumping from his wounds. Craft gave the young man absolution as his hands slipped from the priest's shoulders. Exploding shrapnel and shot knocked them to the ground. As the Indian tried to help Craft to his feet, adversaries from both sides misread the scene as an assault. Soldiers assumed that the Indian had killed Kelly and was attacking Craft, and that is exactly what the Indians thought too. Craft pushed the Indian behind him, shielding him from soldiers who raised their rifles to fire, as another Indian named Tantanyan Kuetpi (Aimed at him) ran by, plunging a long, broad-bladed knife into the priest's back. It entered under his right shoulder blade near the spine and passed through his lungs to the upper part of his breast. Almost immediately, a metal fragment hit near the same laceration. He felt more shock than pain, later saying that there was less bleeding than he would expected from such a wound, and that he "could scarcely distinguish what pierced the body from what merely grazed and tore the clothes -- If the solders had been the bloodthirsty, excited savages they have been falsely described, I never could have managed to save that Indian, as I must admit his helping me to rise just then and just as he did, made it look very much as if he had killed Kelly and then grappled me - at least it must have seemed so to that party of Soldiers, who just came up returning from another part of the field, and had not seen the beginnings of the affair. The all behaved well through the fight, and would not have lost half as many as they did if they had tried to kill instead of trying to save the Indians even the fightng men. There has been an effort to charge the soldiers wtih cruelty and slaughter, but it is a vile slander. They worked hard to stop the fight, and to save lives. After the battle, some of them had little Indian babies wrapped in their coats, carryng them off the field. The poor little ones crowed and laughed at their blue-coated "mothers," and the soldiers broke down and cried like babies, and cursed everything and everybody that caused the war - in fact everything except the indians."

The first news from the field at Wounded Knee reported that Craft had not survived: "Father Craft Killed," proclaimed the headline of the New York Freeman's Journal of Saturday, 3 January 1891. "The Great Indian Missionary Shot through the Lungs While Fulfilling His Mission of Peace." "A Noble Martyr." "One of the Horrible Results of Morgan's Inane Indian Policy."

Bishop Shanley capitalized on Father Craft's wound to dramatize the need for funding the mission's activities. Father Stephan, however, was far less enthusaistic about the notoriety attendant on Craft's wounding. The priest had already been too much of a headache for Stephan and the harreid Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. The Wounded Knee affair would surely place Craft, whom he already considered a loose cannon, at center stage. A letter to Bishop Shanley on 23 January offered only the following terse comment: "Father Craft was stabbed below the shoulder blade by an Indian from his old parish of Rosebud. He went with the miitary and then went over to the Indians to talk with them to surrender their guns. It seems that the Indians believed him to be with their enemies and hence the hatred and while he supported the wounded Indian, the Indian drew his knife and stabbed him in the back."

The debate since the carnage at Wounded Knee Creek has left unsolved the turmoil and controversy that marked the event at the time. The army described it as an "affair" but soon settle on a "battle." which their opponents claimed was, more accurately, a "massacre." Eighteen congressional Medals of Honor granted for valor displayed there are now viewed in some quarters as little more than a military cover-up for the slaughter of innocent Indians. Today there is an ongoing movement to have these awards posthumously rescinded. Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, commander of the Division of the Missouri brought charges against Coloner Flosyth for allowing the killing of noncombatants and for deploying his troops in such a manner as to enble them to fire on each other. A military court of inquiry exonerated Forsyth and his troops. History, however, has not been so kind.

Craft's statements, for all their conflict with today's popular consensus, generally conform with contemporary accounts. Some of his editorial comments seem far afield but his descripton of the attempted disarming and the movements of the Indians can all be reconciled with other eyewitness reports. Troops on the east and west flanks withheld their fire for several minutes, as did the Hotchkiss guns, until the Indians who had crossed back into the camp began firing from there as well; even so, several soldiers died in the crossfire of their own bullets. Today's scholarship, however emphatically disagrees with the priest's conclusion that the Indians were responsible for the death of their own women and children. For the rest of his life Craft never varied from his position, always defending the military as public sentimen turned increasingly against it.

Soon after the battle, a burial detail interred 146 Indians in a single mass grave on Cemetery Hill near Wounded Knee Creek; 84 men, 44 women, and 18 children. As much as he defended the actions of the military, the priest's fundamental empathy and compassion for the Indians led him to a propostion that deeply confounded his Jesuit associates. From his hospital bed at Pine Ridge, Craft made plans to join the Indian dead: "I wrote a letter to the commanding officer here, to be given to him in case of my death, asking and authorizing him to take charge of the body and have it buried in the trench with the Indian dead at Wounded Knee. I had to leave it to him because Father Jutz declared he wouldn't officiate if I arranged it so, and seemed quite put out because I preferred the Indian to the white dead.

It was not to be. This Black Robe, an observant noted, was too tough to die just then: "Father Craft must have had .. his full share of vitality. The wound which he received on that occasion would undoubtedly have killed some men. He was laid up but a short time, and if he stoped smoking cigarettes for two days because of that little cut, I have no record of it."

(From the book "Father Francis M.Craft, Missionary to the Sioux" by Thomas W. Foley.) (Fr. Craft was from New York and was part Mohawk)

25 Soldiers died in the battle, and 39 were wounded.
 

Steve

Well-known member
for me it is hard to criminalize a band of people driven off their lands by a government who broke about every treaty they signed.. their crime at Wounded Knee was to believe in their god given rights and not follow government orders..

orders that even now would be considered unconstitutional..

wounded Knee like other instances to disarm .. all have both bad folk involved when you hear the story.. but when the crime becomes not following the government mandates, and ends with a government decision to disarm them, it often becomes a death sentence..

just like ruby ridge, or waco.. the persons involved had violated laws.. and stood their ground when defending what they felt was their constitutional god given rights.

today in New York.. many just lost those rights.. many will not comply..

I know some who won't... decent good folk.. now by intent.. they are criminals.. having never broken any laws before.. and the media will portray them as just another gun nut... but when the police go to take their guns...


grant my words.. it will end the same...
 

Mike

Well-known member
"The more Indians we can kill this year the fewer we will need to kill the next, because the more I see of the Indians the more convinced I become that they must either all be killed or be maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts at civilization is ridiculous..." Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
 

Martin Jr.

Well-known member
Not all army officers thought like General William Sherman.

Here are some examples:

"It matters not whether the grievances of our Indians be true or false, exaggerated or under-estimated, the fact that the word of our Government is mistrusted by every tribe on the continent cannot be denied and is a black blot upon our national escutcheon."
First Lieutenant John Gregory Bourke

"It seems to me to be an odd feature of our judicial system that the only people in this country who have no rights under the law are the original owners of the soil: and Irishman, German, Chinaman, Turk or Tarter will be protected in life and property, but the Indian commands respect for his rights only so long as he inspires terror for his rifle."
Brigadier General George Crook

I don't blame the soldiers in the Wounded Knee massacre, but the orders that came from Washington, although the soldiers were not prepared for the way things turned out.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Martin Jr. said:
Not all army officers thought like General William Sherman.

Here are some examples:

"It matters not whether the grievances of our Indians be true or false, exaggerated or under-estimated, the fact that the word of our Government is mistrusted by every tribe on the continent cannot be denied and is a black blot upon our national escutcheon."
First Lieutenant John Gregory Bourke

"It seems to me to be an odd feature of our judicial system that the only people in this country who have no rights under the law are the original owners of the soil: and Irishman, German, Chinaman, Turk or Tarter will be protected in life and property, but the Indian commands respect for his rights only so long as he inspires terror for his rifle."
Brigadier General George Crook

I don't blame the soldiers in the Wounded Knee massacre, but the orders that came from Washington, although the soldiers were not prepared for the way things turned out.

No, not all U.S. Officers thought like Sherman but even your quotes hint that the overwhelming majority of gov't officials prevailed in annihilating almost an entire race of people through force.

Too bad Sherman didn't meet the same fate as Custer.
 
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