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Wounded Knee Massacre
The women and children, who were standing to the side of the camp, began to run for the ravines. Some were later found up to two miles away from the camp after soldiers had hunted them down and killed them. Four babies were found alive beneath their mother’s bodies.
A mere 14 years later, after the death of Crazy Horse and Chief Sitting Bull, the Lakota people were facing annihiliation. Their leaders were being killed by members of their own tribe who were scouts and police agents for the US government. They themselves were starving. Chief Spotted Elk (often referred to as Chief Big Foot) and his band traveled to the Pine Ridge agency in the hopes that a ghost dance would be an answer to prayers.
“The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.
In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.”
Then a young newspaper editor, later the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L Frank Baum editorialized for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer on 3 January 1891:
In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.”
Then a young newspaper editor, later the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L Frank Baum editorialized for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer on 3 January 1891:
There are no accurate figures for the number of buffalo then but anthropologists have put the figure between 30 and 60 million animals.The animals were skinned and the carcasses were left to rot on the land. Only the tongue was cut out as it was a delicacy for the white settlers and hunters. The killing was vast and relentless. By 1885, the government estimated that only 200 buffalo were alive in the wild. In 45 years (1840 to 1885) the huge herds had been destroyed with the numbers declining from millions to barely nothing. It is likely that such slaughter has not seen a parallel in History.
General Sheridan of the American Army said:
"These men (the buffalo hunters) have done more in two years, and will do more in the next two years, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in thirty years.....let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated.........then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle."
One of the hunters, Teddy Blue Abbot, was convinced that:
"this slaughter was a put up job on the part of the government to control Indians by getting rid of their food supply.........it was a low down dirty business."
"These men (the buffalo hunters) have done more in two years, and will do more in the next two years, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in thirty years.....let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated.........then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle."
One of the hunters, Teddy Blue Abbot, was convinced that:
"this slaughter was a put up job on the part of the government to control Indians by getting rid of their food supply.........it was a low down dirty business."
