A non-vanishing people

If you know about only one event in American Indian history, it’s probably Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Bighorn in 1876. Lakota and Cheyenne Indians repelled Custer’s surprise attack, killing more than 250 American soldiers. If you know any other event, it’s probably the massacre at Wounded Knee in late December 1890. 

Eyewitnesses and historians have debated about what sparked the confrontation between Lakotas and the cavalry. We know that troops rounded up Lakota men in order to disarm them. Historian Jeffrey Ostler, who has pored over the documentary evidence, put it this way: “While the men were being searched a shot was fired. An instant later, the Seventh Cavalry began firing.” Some Lakota men reached for their guns, but many were killed within minutes. Lakota women and children scattered. Soldiers chased them and shot them.

While casualty numbers have been disputed, Ostler found that between 270 and 300 Lakotas died or were mortally wounded in the massacre. More than half of these casualties were women or children. Soldiers buried their bodies in a mass grave not far from the massacre site. With these two stories at the forefront of American historical memory, one could have the impression that Native Americans put up a good fight, but were eventually defeated, if not crushed, by U.S. forces.