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The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek (Lakota: ''Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála'') on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota. The previous day, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside intercepted Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them westward to Wounded Knee Creek, where they made camp. The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth, arrived and surrounded the encampment. The regiment was supported by a battery of four Hotchkiss mountain guns. 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. A scuffle over the rifle escalated, and a shot was fired which resulted in the 7th Cavalry's opening fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their fellow soldiers. The Lakota warriors who still had weapons began shooting back at the attacking soldiers, who quickly suppressed the Lakota fire. The surviving Lakota fled, but cavalrymen pursued and killed many who were unarmed. By the time it was over, more than 200 men, women, and children of the Lakota had been killed and 51 were wounded (4 men, 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300.〔 Twenty-five soldiers also died, and 39 were wounded (6 of the wounded later died).〔''Wounded Knee & the Ghost Dance Tragedy'' by Jack Utter, p. 25 Publisher: National Woodlands Publishing Company; 1st edition (April 1991) Language: English ISBN 0-9628075-1-6〕 At least twenty soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor. In 2001, the National Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions condemning the awards and called on the U.S. government to rescind them.〔 The site of the battlefield has been designated a National Historic Landmark.〔 ==Prelude== In the years leading up to the conflict, the U.S. government had continued to seize Lakota lands. The once-large bison herds (an indigenous peoples' Great Plains staple) had been hunted to near-extinction by European settlers. Treaty promises〔Hall, Kermit L (ed.), ''The Oxford Guide to the Supreme Court of the United States,'' Oxford Press, 1992; section: "Native Americans," p. 580 ISBN 0-19-505835-6〕 to protect reservation lands from encroachment by settlers and gold miners were not implemented as agreed. As a result, there was unrest on the reservations.〔To this day, the Sioux have refused to accept compensation for the Black Hills land seized from them. A 1980 Supreme Court decision (''United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians'') ruled the taking was illegal and awarded compensation, increased by interest to $757 million, but not the return of the land which the Sioux sought. The Lakota have refused to take the money, demanding instead the return of the land.〕 During this time, news spread among the reservations of a Paiute prophet named Wovoka, founder of the Ghost Dance religion. He had a vision that the Christian Messiah, Jesus Christ, had returned to Earth in the form of a Native American.〔("Wovoka." ) ''PBS: New Perspectives on the West.'' (retrieved 6 August 2010)〕 According to Wovoka, the Messiah would raise all the Native American believers above the earth. During this time, the white man would disappear from Native lands, the ancestors would lead them to good hunting grounds, the buffalo herds and all the other animals would return in abundance, and the ghosts of their ancestors would return to earth — hence the word "Ghost" in "Ghost Dance." They would then return to earth to live in peace. All this would be brought about by performance of the slow and solemn "Ghost Dance," performed as a shuffle in silence to a slow, single drumbeat, unlike the dance depicted in the drawing above intended to inflame eastern readers. Lakota ambassadors to Wovoka, Kicking Bear and Short Bull taught the Lakota that while performing the Ghost Dance, they would wear special Ghost Dance shirts as seen by Black Elk in a vision. Kicking Bear said the shirts had the power to repel bullets.〔 American settlers were alarmed by the sight of the many Great Basin and Plains tribes performing the Ghost Dance, worried that it might be a prelude to armed attack. Among them was the US Indian Agent at the Standing Rock Agency where Chief Sitting Bull lived. US officials decided to take some of the chiefs into custody in order to quell what they called the "Messiah Craze". The military first hoped to have Buffalo Bill — a friend of Sitting Bull — aid in the plan to reduce the chance of violence. Standing Rock agent James McLaughlin overrode the military and sent the Indian police to arrest Sitting Bull. On December 15, 1890, 40 Indian policemen arrived at Chief Sitting Bull's house to arrest him. Crowds gathered in protest, and the first shot was fired when Sitting Bull tried to pull away from his captors, killing the officer who had been holding him. Additional shots were fired, resulting in the deaths of Sitting Bull, eight of his supporters, and six policemen. After Sitting Bull's death, 200 members of his Hunkpapa band, fearful of reprisals, fled Standing Rock to join Chief Spotted Elk (later known as "Big Foot") and his Miniconjou band at the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Spotted Elk and his band, along with 38 Hunkpapa, left the Cheyenne River Reservation on December 23 to journey to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to seek shelter with Red Cloud.〔Viola, Herman J. ''Trail to Wounded Knee: The Last Stand of the Plains Indians 1860–1890''. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2003.〕 Former Pine Ridge Indian agent Valentine T. McGillycuddy was asked his opinion of the 'hostilities' surrounding the Ghost Dance movement by General Leonard Wright Colby commander of the Nebraska National Guard (portion of letter dated Jan. 15, 1891):〔Annual report, Part 2 By Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology, John Wesley Powell, Matthew Williams, pp. 831–833 (1896)〕 "As for the 'Ghost Dance' too much attention has been paid to it. It was only the symptom or surface indication of a deep rooted, long existing difficulty; as well treat the eruption of small pox as the disease and ignore the constitutional disease." "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. ''P.S. I neglected to state that up to date there has been neither a Sioux outbreak or war. No citizen in Nebraska or Dakota has been killed, molested or can show the scratch of a pin, and no property has been destroyed off the reservation."〔''The ghost-dance religion and the Sioux outbreak of 1890'', by James Mooney, p. 833〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wounded Knee Massacre」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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