Wounded Knee Massacre Essay

Wounded Knee was a terrible event in US history. It showed how the US government didn't understand the Native Americans and treated them badly and unfairly.

It held many struggles and disagreements, which lead to many retaliations, from both the Indians and the settlers. The Indians had been alliances with the white men until the massacre, which stated the settlers betrayal to all tribes.

The Battle of Little Bighorn and the Massacre at Wounded Knee were both significant and terrible events that took place in American history during the 1800’s. These two eyewitness documents provide information and details about two important Indian battles against American troops. These events occurred 14 years apart but both were the result of the Sioux Indians being unsatisfied with their freedom taken from them.

Army and the forceful action used to confine the natives, the construction on Indian land, and the massive slaughter of the buffalo which the Indians relied on in every aspect of life. The mistreatment of the Native Americans has been going on for hundreds of years, way before the Gold Rush began. The American government has taken land that they are unable to return to this day. They have deprived the plains Indians of their culture and freedom. Immigration from other countries was at its peak, but America still wasn’t able to call people, that had resided in the United States for many years, citizens. Even the Native American’s, that had lived on the continent before it was even discovered, were denied citizenship unless they were Anglo-Saxon Protestant. To this day, many look at the Indians as a joke; The Seminoles as “The Tribe that Purchased A Billion Dollar Business.” Children are being taught about friendship between the American Settlers and the Natives, they are being lied to. The upcoming generations won’t understand the horrors of unnecessary warfare against innocent people, and they will only know to take what they want, even if it isn’t rightfully theirs. America as a nation has to be stopped from draping curtains over the defeat of the plains Indians: their wiping out of an entire people, just as they did to the

President Harrison’s intended message in his “Report on Wounded Knee Massacre and the Decrease in Indian Land Acreage” is to ensure the people that the massacre was a self-defense act by the soldiers. He said that the natives were “naturally warlike and turbulent” which puts the blame on the massacre on the Natives. Modern American’s can learn a lot from the Wounded Knee Massacre. To Americans, the massacre represents the end of the Indian resistance. Although this massacre is usually not mentioned in history classes today is it defiantly something that should be remembered. American soldiers were violent towards the Indians. While men were trying to flee the American soldiers would shoot them in the back and let their bodies there to freeze.

The Trail of Tears played a part in what is known as the Manifest Destiny, which was the expansion of the colonists to the west. Gold was found on the Cherokee land during the Georgia Gold Rush. The greed that it created was one of the leading causes of the Trail of Tears where thousands of Native Americans were forcibly relocated from their native lands (Cherokee.org). Little did the Native Americans realize that the new nation that was going to be forming around them would affect not only their lives but the lives of their descendants. Even though the Cherokee made efforts to keep their land through the court system and even attempted to assimilate to the American way of life it was to no avail. They tried to agree to treaties with the United States Government. Even though, they were eventually forced to leave their lands. By forcing the Native Americans to abandon their homes, robbing their lands, taking their freedom, and forcing them to adapt and to assimilate into a new land and culture showed how vindictive President Andrew Jackson was regarding the Native Americans. The Trail of Tears was an instance of the United States Government committing genocide against the Native Americans

troops were on the pine ridge reservation in South Dakota to quiet the ghost dance disorder of 1890.After the Indian police killed chief sitting bull while trying to arrest him on December 15th on the standing rock his hunkpapa band of the Lakota tribe grew agitated and troop reinforcements arrived.When 200 of the Indians fled southward to Cheyenne river military officials feared a hunkpapa miniconjou coalition.There was about 38 of the hunkpapa joined a more militant group of 350 or so miniconjou ghost dancers led by chief Bigfoot.

Such a massacre is “the total destruction in 1792 of a far northwest coast Nootka Indian village called Opitsatah, half a mile in diameter and containing more than 200 elaborately carved homes (and many times that number of people)”( Stannard 125). This is just one of the many native american massacres carried out. There were massacres that were more vicious and beastly than the one of the Nootka village. The barbarity at Wounded Knee was another tragedy:

Many people think of the Civil War and America’s Indian wars as distinct subjects, one following the other. But those who study the Sand Creek Massacre know different. On Nov. 29, 1864, as Union armies fought through Virginia and Georgia, Col. John Chivington led some 700 cavalry troops in an unprovoked attack on peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho villagers at Sand Creek in Colorado. They murdered nearly 200 women, children and older men. Sand Creek was one of many assaults on American Indians during the war, from Patrick Edward Connor’s massacre of Shoshone villagers along the Idaho-Utah border at Bear River on Jan. 29, 1863, to the forced removal and incarceration of thousands of Navajo people in 1864 known as the Long Walk. In terms of sheer

Native Americans admittedly, did surprisingly little in the initial two thirds of the period, despite the Plains Wars and other small-localized armed resistance during the nineteenth century; the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1889 effectively marked the end to such resistance. Whilst it can be argued that their efforts were at best lukewarm during the beginning, in the closing third of the period, the Native Americana ‘movement’, galvanized by the African American civil rights campaign and revolutionary zeitgeist became increasingly active and forceful in the advancement of their civil rights. Thus the

As a child, I have always been intrigued about the vast traditions and the colorful histories of various Indian Tribes. I choose Dee Browns “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” in order to be further educated about the Native American nations. I was familiar with the piece long before I even knew it was a book by watching and love the HBO special on “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee”.

The Wounded Knee, the confliction of North Americans Indians and the U.S government representatives, was located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of South Dakota, U.S. This massacre that began on December 29, 1890, was the cause of

This movie was pleasantly surprising. It was an enjoyable watch and told a story that kept the plot line and details close to the real history of the Sioux Indians’ lives, starting with The Battle at Little Big Horn.

On the morning of December 29, 1890, many Sioux Indians (estimated at above two hundred) died at the hands of the United States Army near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Indians were followers of the Ghost Dance religion, devised by Wovoka, a Paiute prophet, as a spiritual outlet for Indian repression by whites. The United States Army set out to intercept this group of Native Americans because they performed the controversial Ghost Dance. Both whites’ and the Sioux’s misunderstanding of an originally peaceful Indian religion culminated in the Battle of Wounded Knee. This essay first shows how the Ghost Dance came about, its later adaptation by the Sioux, and

On November 18, 1978, followers of Jim Jones shot and killed United States Congressman Leo J. Ryan and four others traveling with him on a fact finding trip to Guyana. Ryan was there to investigate complaints about the community called "Jonestown," which was largely inhabited by his former California constituents.