The Wounded Knee Massacre took place

On the morning of 29 December 1890, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Miniconjou Lakota under chief Big Foot (Sitanka) at Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. The soldiers had been sent to disarm followers of the Ghost Dance, a religious movement promising renewal that federal officials wrongly read as a threat.

As troops searched the camp for weapons, a single shot rang out — from which side remains unclear. The cavalry, who heavily outnumbered the Lakota and had positioned rapid-fire guns on the surrounding hills, opened fire on people who had largely already surrendered their arms.

Modern scholars estimate that between 250 and 300 Miniconjou were killed in total, almost half of whom were women and children.

Because the victims were so outmatched, historians classify the event as a massacre, not a battle. It is widely remembered as the brutal end of Plains peoples’ armed resistance to reservation life.