Chief Bigfoot's Band was intercepted by the 7th Calvary on this day in 1890
?
After the murder of Tantanka Iyotake (Sitting Bull) and after eluding Custer's old unit, the 7th Calvary, for 12 days a band of Minniconjou Lakota, led by Spotted Elk ( Chief Bigfoot) was intercepted along the western rim of Porcupine Creek on this day in 1890. They were escorted to and camped in a hollow a few miles south near the creek called Wounded Knee.
In the early morning hours on December 29th, 1890, the men
were assembled in a semi-circle formation in front of the tipis
and disarmed.
Yellow Bird, a holy man fearing for the lives of his people stood up and beseeched the Creator and asked for protection.
A shot rang out and the soldiers fired en masse into the sitting
Lakota men, killing most of them instantly. The horror was only
beginning.
The women and children ran as the soldiers chased them
down and killed them one by one. The slaughter continued
for over three hours. Some of the dead were found over three miles
from the campsite.
In vol.3, issue 1, "The Lakota Journal" listed the names of the Lakota
victims of the massacre at Wounded Knee. Four-hundred and five were listed as killed. Of this number, 69 were identified as infants or young children, 133 were identified as women, the remaining 203 were identified as men or had no gender or age identification. Of the total dead, 39 were identified as elders.
The bodies were left to freeze onto the prairie. Over the next three
days survivors and relatives recovered nearly half of the dead. On
the third day a government burial detail arrived to bury the remaining
victims. The bodies were stripped of valuables and dropped into a
mass grave.
A 40 year old, named Last Man, lay gutshot, frozen
to the ground until he was discovered on the 5th of January, 8 days
after the slaughter of December 29th. Last Man died at 8am on
January 6th, 1891.
The United States government awarded 23 Medals of Honor to
members of the Seventh Calvary for their service to the nation at this
place, the creek called Wounded Knee. 45).
Chief Bigfoot's body was scalped and the trophy was sent to
the Seventh Cavalry's museum in Massachusetts. There it remained
over the protests of Chief Bigfoot's family until the summer of 2000.
The last remains of Chief Bigfoot were returned to the place of his
birth, 109 years after his murder.
"I did not know then how much had ended. When I look back
from this high hill of my old age I can still see the butchered
women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the
crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.
And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud
and was buried in the blizzard. A peoples 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
-Lakota-
http://www.brotherhooddays.com/woundedknee.html
?
Lost Bird was seven months old on December 29th, 1890, the day her mother was shot down at Cankpi Opi Wakpala, the creek called Wounded Knee. Four days after the massacre, Lost Bird was discovered under the frozen body of her mother by General Leonard Colby. Colby took the child for his own and raised Lost Bird in White society. Lost Bird suffered greatly during her life, searching for her identity, subjected to sexual abuse by an adopted cousin and raped and impregnated by Colby, her adoptive father.
She led a tragic life and died on Valentine's Day, 1919, in California. Lost Bird's remains were repatriated to the Wounded Knee Cemetery in 1991. Her life remains a powerful symbol and has become a rallying point for Native People attempting to re-connect to their culture and families the thousands of Native children and their descendants that were removed from their culture and adopted into non-Indian society.
http://www.brotherhooddays.com/lost_bird.htm
= new reply since forum marked as read
Medals of Honour. 
Was speaking with a woman that worked for a drug company I have to deal with. She said she'd gone to So. Dakota about 14 years ago and that she could not believe how racist the Indian people there were.
She said, "Well, I thought all of that hatred and stuff was over with."
I didn't know what to say as the call was being recorded but I felt like telling her that the hatred is justified and how would YOU feel if everyone in your family had been killed?
I didn't say it but sure thought it.
I find it almost amazing to know that there are Americans among us that think that the Indian issue is "over with". It is far from over with and never will be "over with".
Much restitution is deserved to the Native people of this land we call America. The crime of genocide has taken a tremendous toll over the years and it is almost amazing to know that there are still some Indian people alive today. With government policies such as extermination, assimilation and alas, "self-determination" at work one can see how horrific the white man's will has harmed and damaged a people that most certainly never deserved it.
It is all about one word and that is GREED. GREED kills.
The ugliest racists I encountered were white people. They were hoping the forest would catch on fire and that the Black Hills would burn so they could make a bunch of $$$ working overtime.
Nice folks alright ... 
A group portrait of Big Foot’s Miniconjou Lakota band at a Grass Dance on the Cheyenne River, South Dakota, in August 1890. Nearly all these people were killed at Wounded Knee just a few months later.
Wounded Knee encampment.
Hotchkiss guns used at Wounded Knee.
View of the slain body of Chief Big Foot propped up in the snow at Wounded Knee. U.S. soldiers, civilian burial party members, and a “Chunk” or “Stick” Stove of the type used to heat the Conical or Sibley army tent are shown in the background. (The Stick Stove almost certainly marks the location of Big Foot’s tent, which was very close to the council circle. Major Samuel Whitside of the 7th Cavalry ordered a stove placed in Big Foot’s tent on the night before the massacre.)
On December 29, 1890, in a ravine near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, the U.S. Army, supported by American Indian mercenaries, slaughtered approximately 300 Lakota men, women and children—75% of Big Foot's Lakota community. They had already surrendered when they were brought to Wounded Knee by the army. The U.S. troops turned their weapons—including 4 rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns—against clearly defeated warriors and innocent women, children and old men.
How sad and vicious. Apple Pie, huh? Eat this pie, 'god bless amerika' crowd.
I applaud your answers to me and the person you're responding too with this answer. In peace.
Wounded Knee aftermath
Dr. Charles Eastman, a Dakota, hears reports of a battle. Despite a blizzard and Army efforts to delay him, three days later he arrives with 85 Lakotas and 10 to 15 white civilians who plan to bury the dead at Wounded Knee. Although he had been told that the incident was a battle, Eastman writes that it was massacre, in which those who fled were “relentlessly hunted down”. Amid the destruction he finds a baby girl, named Zinkala Nuni by Lakota survivors, who is adopted by an Army officer.
“Fully three miles from the scene of the massacre we found the body of a woman completely covered with a blanket of snow, and from this point on we found them scattered along as they had been relentlessly hunted down and slaughtered, while fleeing for their lives. Some of our people discovered relatives or friends among the dead, and there was much wailing and mourning. When we reached the spot where the Indian camp had stood, among the fragments of burned tents and other belongings, we saw frozen bodies lying close together or piled one upon another,” Charles Eastman wrote. “It took all my nerve to keep my composure in the face of this spectacle, and of the grief of my Indian companions, nearly everyone of whom was crying aloud or singing his death song.”
?
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/378.html
