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The impact of the railroad on the Native American way of life was mostly negative. Conflict between Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) crews and Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors led to an increased U.S. military presence in the West and was a factor in the removal of these same tribes to smaller reservations. The UPRR even used Pawnee scouts to protect their crews, thereby pitting groups of Native Americans against each other and furthering intertribal feuding. These Pawnee were also asked to perform typical “Native” scenes whenever UPRR officials brought important people to see the end of the line.After the completion of the railroad, conflict against Native Americans continued to escalate, culminating in several massacres. However, Native Americans were not silent bystanders to what they considered to be an invasion of their geographic and intellectual territory. Deeply disturbed by these events, a Paiute man named Wodziwob, who lived on a reservation in Nevada, began a movement called the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance was part religious ritual and part cultural production that celebrated the commonalities between Native cultures, and it promised a return to life before white Americans settled the West. Wodziwob’s followers used the railroad to spread this intertribal movement all over the continent, using the technology that had caused them so much distress to promote and disseminate information about this cultural phenomenon. The 1870s Ghost Dance lasted only about three years, but twenty years later, a second Ghost Dance movement spread across the United States. This illustration shows individuals practicing the second iteration of the movement, which in 1890 culminated in the Wounded Knee Massacre, when U.S. troops opened fire on Native American men, women, and children, killing nearly 150. Violent
conflicts between Native American groups and the U.S. military were common throughout many territories. One of the last military actions against Native Americans of the northern Plains took place on December 29, 1890. Government officials banned a growing religion known as the Ghost Dance on a South Dakota reservation that month. As part of the crackdown against the Ghost Dance, soldiers from the Seventh U.S. Cavalry Regiment arrested a band of Lakota who were traveling toward the Pine Ridge
Reservation and confined them to a camp near Wounded Knee Creek. The day after the arrest, the military attempted to recover weapons from the imprisoned refugees. A gun was discharged and soldiers opened fire. When the shooting stopped, hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children were dead. The massacre site became a place of remembrance for Native Americans, and decades later Wounded Knee would be a rallying cry in struggles for Native American rights. Part of
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Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was the site of two conflicts between Native Americans and representatives of the U.S. government, including the U.S. Army and, later, the FBI. An 1890 massacre left some 150 Native Americans dead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux tribe. In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days to protest conditions on the reservation. WATCH: Native American History Documentaries on HISTORY Vault Ghost Dance and Sitting BullThroughout 1890, the U.S. government was worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Native Americans had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs. Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, whom they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge in South Dakota. Wounded Knee MassacreOn December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side. A brutal massacre followed, in which an estimated 150 Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men. The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle—the Army troops involved were later rewarded with Medals of Honor—but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it’s unlikely that Big Foot’s band would have intentionally started a fight. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment’s defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876. Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was one of the last major confrontations in the Indian Wars, America’s deadly series of wars against the Plains Indians and other Native Americans. Scroll to Continue American Indian MovementThe American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 in an effort to stop police harassment of Indians in the Minneapolis area. Borrowing some tactics from the Vietnam war protests of the era, AIM soon gained national notoriety for its flamboyant demonstrations. However, many mainstream Indian leaders denounced the youth-dominated group as too radical. In 1972, a faction of AIM members led by Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier sought to close the divide by making alliances with traditional tribal elders on reservations. They had their greatest success on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, after a group of young white men murdered a Sioux man named Yellow Thunder. Although Yellow Thunder’s attackers received only six-year prison sentences, this was widely seen as a victory by the local Sioux accustomed to unfair treatment by the often racist judicial system. AIM’s highly visible publicity campaign on the case was given considerable credit for the verdict, winning the organization a great deal of respect on the reservation. Wounded Knee SiegeAIM’s growing prestige and influence, however, threatened the conservative Sioux tribal chairman, Dick Wilson. When Wilson learned of a planned AIM protest against his administration at Pine Ridge, he retreated to tribal headquarters where he was under the protection of federal marshals and Bureau of Indian Affairs police. Rather than confront the police in Pine Ridge, some 200 AIM members and their supporters decided to occupy the symbolically significant hamlet of Wounded Knee, site of the 1890 massacre. Wilson, with the backing of the federal government, responded by besieging Wounded Knee. During the 71 days of the siege, which began on February 27, 1973, federal officers and AIM members exchanged gunfire almost nightly. Hundreds of arrests were made, and two Native Americans were killed and a federal marshal was permanently paralyzed by a bullet wound. The leaders of AIM finally surrendered on May 8 after a negotiated settlement was reached. In a subsequent trial, the judge ordered their acquittal because of evidence that the FBI had manipulated key witnesses. AIM emerged victorious and succeeded in shining a national spotlight on the problems of modern Native Americans. Trouble Continues at Pine RidgeThe troubles at Wounded Knee, however, were not over after the siege. A virtual civil war broke out between the opposing Indian factions on the Pine Ridge reservation, and a series of beatings, shootings and murders left more than 100 Indians dead. When two FBI agents were killed in a 1975 gunfight, the agency raided the reservation and arrested AIM leader Leonard Peltier for the crime. The FBI crackdown coupled with AIM’s own excesses ended its influence at Pine Ridge. In 1977, Peltier was convicted of killing the two FBI agents and sentenced to life in prison. To this day, Peltier’s supporters continue to maintain his innocence and seek a presidential pardon for him. And in 2021, members of the U.S. Congress petitioned President Joe Biden to revoke the Medals of Honor soldiers received for their participation in the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. SourcesDisaster at Wounded Knee. Library of Congress. What led to the Wounded Knee massacre?Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment's defeat at the Little Bighorn in 1876. Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last major confrontation in America's deadly war against the Plains Indians.
How did the Battle of Wounded Knee affect Native American?The massacre was the climax of the U.S. Army's late 19th-century efforts to repress the Plains Indians. It broke any organized resistance to reservation life and assimilation to white American culture, although American Indian activists renewed public attention to the massacre during a 1973 occupation of the site.
Why was the site of Wounded Knee so significant to the Native Americans?When the shooting stopped, hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children were dead. The massacre site became a place of remembrance for Native Americans, and decades later Wounded Knee would be a rallying cry in struggles for Native American rights.
What action triggered the Wounded Knee massacre quizlet?What events led to the Wounded Knee Massacre? Wovoka was a Paiute who encouraged native american to leave the reservations and to perform the Ghost Dance in the hopes of regaining their previous way of life. The army captured the dancers, someone fired a shot and the army killed about 300 men, women, and children.
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Which native american practice was a central factor in the wounded knee massacre?
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