Preview

History Research Paper on Battle at Wounded Knee

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1756 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
History Research Paper on Battle at Wounded Knee
“To own the Earth, There is no word for this in the Sioux Language.” The Battle of Wounded Knee was the last battle of the American Indian Wars it was also one of the most gruesome battles that either side had seen. An estimated three hundred Indians lay dead while the US army had lost twenty five and thirty nine were wounded some of who would die later. This was one of the worst acts that the Americans have ever done to the Native Americans. One Native American stated later “it was as if the soldiers were crazed by the sight of blood and had appeared wild eyed as they shot again and again into some of the bodies.” Many Native Americans still hold grudges to this day over what happened to their ancestors on that sacred piece of land this is their story. This monumental battle took place in the winter of 1890 it would forever change the course of history and the lives of many Native Americans all across the mid-west.
The year is 1890 and the United States government have been taking and forcing many Native American tribes off of the land that they had called home for generations. There had been numerous wars leading up to this point in time such as the three Seminole Wars, The Black Hawk War, and many other battles all around the country. By this point in the history of the United States the size of the Indian reservations had been reduced drastically. The movement also left many Indians off of their homelands due to this many settled where the government told them to. Many of the tribes that called the plains of the mid-west home had been fighting with whites for many years. Due to the mass movement of settlers onto their lands, one major reason was the discovery of gold in the Black Hills which were part of the Lakota reservation given to them in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Whites tried many time s to purchase this land but the Lakota refused to sale their sacred Black Hills. In 1876 the US government became impatient and frustrated with the Lakota Indians. Due

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In The Shadow Of The Wounded Knee by Alexandra Fuller is an article which talks about the Wounded Knee tribe, and what historical events against them have led the people left from the tribe, to today. This paper was mostly an interview with Alex White Plume, a 60 year old man who lives near wounded knee creek. Talking about what he lives by, and what he and his tribe have had to overcome.…

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Nate Murray Wounded Knee Massacre – Black Elk Speaks, The Butchering At Wounded Knee History and background How it started: In years previous to the massacre the US government had been seizing large portions of the Native American tribe, the Sioux’s lands. Bison herds had reached near extinction and the treaty promises to the Native Americans protecting reservation lands were not being met. It was during this time that news spread among the reservations of a Native American prophet by the name of Wovoka. Wovoka believed that Jesus Christ had risen as a Native American and prophesied that the dead Native Americans would soon join the living in a world in which the Indians could live in the old way surrounded by plentiful Bison.…

    • 2600 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee a historical movie that centers upon two Native American’s of the Sioux paints a picture of the tragedy of the Native American experience during the 19th century. The movie centers upon Sitting Bull a Native American chief and Charles Eastman a Native American whose education occurred outside the villages of his people. Splitting its narrative between the two characters, the movie coincides with one of the tragic incidents in the Native American history when the Sioux Indian tribe first succeeds at the Battle of Little Big Horn and later is slowly devastated by American Governments violation of signed treaties, and subsequent movement to reservations culminating in the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek. The movie’s concluding scene with the massacre of Wounded Knee Creek led to a negative trajectory that would impact the native population for generations.…

    • 186 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1874, George Armstrong Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills of Dakota where is Sioux’s reservation. Before the gold rich, in 1875, the U.S. Government made a negotiation with the Sioux for buying the Black Hills; however, the offer was refused because the Sioux considered this land as the sacred region. Ignoring the treaty agreements between the Sioux people and the Americans, the U.S. Army decided to invade this lands led to the battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876. To the Sioux tribe, they decided to fight for their rights and preserve their reservation from white man; therefore, under the command of Sitting Bull, they were ready for combating so they left their reservation and gathered in encampments along the Little Bighorn…

    • 255 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wounded Knee Case Study

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The U.S. Government, purpose on gaining the mineral rights and terrains of the Black Hills from the Sioux Indians drafted and instituted the 'Offer or starve' rider to the Indian Appropriations Act of 1876. Which removes all apportions for the Sioux until the point that they ended threats and surrendered the Black Hills to the United States. The Agreement of 1877 formally took away Sioux arrive…

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The arrival of General Custer and his army to the Black Hills (1874), in which it was formally announced that gold had been discovered in the area, was the first time that the Lakotas had even encountered intruders on their land. Eventually, the United States government, on February 28, 1877, passed a Congressional Act which officially claimed and removed the Black Hills from the ownership of the Native American Lakotas. What the white settlers that power-grabbed these lands from the Native Americans did not take into account is that by taking their land, they were also taking pieces of their ancestral and mythical history.…

    • 1032 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Western Expansion, white settlers moved west for numerous reasons. They were motivated to find new land, Gold, and Stuck upon the belief of Manifest Destiny. This attitude helps fuel western settlement, Native American removal and war with Mexico. In doing so, Native Americans faced harsh conditions and were treated horribly. The Great Plain Indians endured the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890, killing of the Buffalo, and many acts such as the Dawes act and Homestead.…

    • 437 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Push West Research Paper

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Native American culture was very rooted in the land comma their lives depended on the Buffalo and their beliefs were tied to the land. Most Plains Indians did not believe that anyone owned the land, this made it easy for the Americans to cheat the natives of their land with treaties and laws they usually couldn't understand. In December of 1890 the Lakota Indians had been chased down by the soldiers set to force them into a reservation, camped in the cold at Wounded Knee many died from the cold alone, after a small conflict the soldiers opened fire upon the mostly helpless Natives. The Great Plains was the Native Americans land that did not see it that way. the natives were cheated, lied to, and slaughtered, their culture was built around the land that was taken away. the treatment of the natives was terrible especially when they couldn't fight back, the massacre at Wounded Knee shows how the West was lost by the cruelty of America. The Native American's lands taken from them, the West was taken from them. the Native Americans of the Great Plains have lost the last due to the wickedness of the American…

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the early 1800s, White settlements were expanding westward. This threatened the Cherokee land which was located in the Southeastern part of the United States. This left the Cherokee with a big decision to make for their entire tribe. Would they relocate West ,or stay for the White settlements to invade where they call home. After all, the Cherokee had owned the land for over 10,000 years. It was not the United States’ land to take. This is why many of the Cherokee Nation felt the need to stay. Others wanted to move because they felt that if they did not, then the United States territory would override the Cherokee customs and they would have to follow United States laws. Clearly the best chance of survival for the Cherokee was to stay in…

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Black Elk Dream

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages

    When the battle of Wounded Knee happened – which cannot really be called a battle, but more a bloody massacre – the Indians were not doing anything that could have been considered attacking the white men, or even controversial. They were doing a ghost dance, because they were fearful about what the white men were going to do to them. They wanted help from their deceased ancestors in the protection from the white men. But the white men had forbid them from dancing too much, and so took it as a threat, and released fire on the Indians. They massacred all Indians present, which were mostly innocent women and children. The massacre at Wounded Knee is kind of a touchy subject to me personally because I have visited the grave site in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and have seen firsthand the devastation that the massacre had on the people, and even how they remember it still today, and mourn for the dead…

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Battle at Wounded Knee

    • 1676 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Many different controversies started all of this trouble. The Sioux tribe had no buffalo, and they couldn’t roam wherever they wanted. It was almost like the US government just had them trapped. They couldn’t go where they wanted to without the US government trying to destroy their lives.…

    • 1676 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Wounded Knee

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages

    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.<br><br>Big Foot was the chief of a subtribe of the Lakota called Miniconjou. He was very old and had pneumonia. He was taking his tribe to the Pine Ridge Reservation in south-western South Dakota. <br><br>Most of the women and children in Big Foot's tribe were family members of the warriors who had died in the Plains wars. The Indians had agreed to live on small reservations after the US government took away their land. At the Wounded Knee camp, there were 120 men and 230 women and children. At the camp, they were guarded by the US Seventh Cavalry lead by Major Samuel Whitside. During the year 1890 a new dance called the Ghost Dance started among the Sioux and other tribes. The Sioux's Christ figure, Wovoka, was said to have flown over Sitting Bull and Short Bull and taught them the dance and the songs. The Ghost Dance legend was that the next spring, when the grass was high, the Earth would be covered with a new layer of soil, covering all white men. Wild buffalo and horses would return and there would be swift running water, sweet grass, and new trees. All Indians who danced the Ghost dance would be floating in the air when the new soil was being laid down and would be saved. The Ghost Dance was made illegal after the Wounded Knee massacre though. On December 28, 1890 the Seventh Cavalry saw Big Foot moving his tribe and Big Foot immediately put up a white flag. Major Samuel Whitside captured the Indians and took them to an army camp near the Pine Ridge reservation at Wounded Knee. Whitside took Bigfoot on his wagon because it was more comfortable and warmer, and Big Foot was sick. Whitside had orders to take the Indians to a military prison in Omaha the next day, but it never happened. That night Colonel James W. Forsyth took over. The Cavalry provided the Indians with tents that night because it was cold…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Know something about the history of the Old West respectively the Great Plains. The Great planes were inhabited by Indian settlers. Their lifestyle was strongly influenced by the buffalos. They lived in tepees so that they can easily move after the buffalos. But in the mid 19th century white settlers moved westward through the Great Plains. For a long time the Great Plains were considered uninhabitable desert, only in about 1865 many settlers settled down there. Because of that the population of buffalos decreases by hunting and the local Indians were displaced in reserves. Also Natives had different beliefs regards to religion and land ownership. All that together caused a big conflict between the Native Indians and the Europeans.…

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    To top it all off the government made an act called the Dawes act that enticed Native Americans to reform into americans with the goal of owning their own land the catch to it was that they had to give up all that they were as an indian nation and were given even less land than the reservations which opened up more land for companies and settlers wanting the…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    one problem white settlers faced in the west was the great plains indian population. when america was settled, most of the indians had been forced westward. those indians were now on land that white settlers wanted. the beginning of the conflict between settlers and indians came whent he transcontinental railroad was being built. the railroad itself not only disrupted indian land, but the workers killed millions of the indian's chief food source, the buffalo. the buffalo were supposedly hindering the progress on the railroad, so they were slaughtered. next came the plea from the settlers to the government to allow them to travel through indian land. the government allowed settlers to do so but promised the indians that no one was going to take their land.…

    • 804 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays