As the afternoon progressed, the Seventh Cavalry continued to attack the Miniconjous huddled in the ravine. There, Dog Chief says, I raised my head and the awful firing was going on. All the men lying around me were killed or wounded. I tried to get up and when I did, I ran toward this ravine down towards the store, and down into a coulee and there I saw women and children, some of them wounded and bleeding.
The "Rapid City (SD) Daily Journal" reported, One little boy nine or ten years old told a pitiful story as he lay wounded in the hospital. He was in Big Foot's camp when the fight commenced and hand in hand with another little fellow of about the same age; he started out at the head of the gully so often referred to as the scene of the greatest carnage. They ran to the top of the hill, when a soldier came in pursuit riding a whote horse. When the trooper rode nearly up to them he dismounted, dropped to one knee and shot the narrator's companion through the head. "He then, " continued the little sufferer, "fired again, the ball striking me in the leg. I fell and the soldier got on his horse and rode away."
The writer editorialized, Such incidents as these are responsible for what bitterness of feeling the Indians now display toward the troops.
Moorehead angrily wrote, Let me give you one other instance of the "Gallant Seventh." There were twenty-six children under the age of thirteen killed at Wounded Knee. There is not the slighest excuse to be offered, nor is there just cause for the shooting of these children. Women were pursued and shot down the same as if they were men. Four babies were found on the battlefield with crushed skulls, showing they had been struck on the head with either the butt of a musket or some heavy club.
In contrast to Miniconjou and civilian accounts, Capt. H. J. Nowlan, Crickett's commanding officer, insisted that the women and children were spared: Indians rushed down the ravine, up and down it; not a shot was fired at them but they were allowed to escape. But right behind them came the bucks, and the cry went up from the officers and men, "Here come the bucks, let them have it"; and our fire was returned by the bucks."
Kelly's account differs, The Indian men, women, and children then ran to the south, the battery firing rapidly as they ran. Soon the dismounted troops were after them, shooting them down on every hand.
The Miniconjous and several white civilians on the scene insisted therewas indiscriminate firing on women and children. The cavalry officers vehemently denied this, often under oath. No one broke rank in this denial.
Elaine Goodale, after interviewing wounded survivors, was convinced there were willful attacks on women and children before and after they entered the ravine. She writes, There is no doubt that the great majority of women and children, as well as many unarmed men and youth, had no thought of anything but flight. They were pursued up the ravines and shot down indiscriminately by the soldiers. The killing of the women and children was in part unavoidable, owing to the confusion, but I think there is no doubt that it was in many cases deliberate and intentional. The Seventh Cavalry, Custer's old command, had an old grudge to repay.
Miniconjou survivors support this view. Edward Owl King, then a young boy, says, All that I remember is that I was running up this ravine trying to get away. There were some ponies, women and children shot down and scattered; and while running, I stepped on them.
John Little Finger says, In this ravine where we took refuge, most of them were women and children and, of course, defenseless and helpless; above them the soldiers just got near them and shot these people down. This was kept up until I heard a voice, an Indian voice, calling from some place in a very far distance, saying that these Indians were to come out of there because the fighting was not to be continued. So some of these, not yet killed, left the big ravine of refuge, and they went up on the flat. I was not with them, because I was shot through in two places, one through my leg and my foot. So I crawled along until I got over where those that were ahead of me sat in a circle up there, and the soldiers were surrounding them. I got up on the flat, a little distance from them, and they started to shoot them again killing them. Of course, those that were not shot tried to get away.
It was a matter of individual survival. Frank Sits Poor admits, As I started up this hill, I overtook an old woman who was ahead of me. As I went past her she got hold of my hand, but I jerked away from her and went right on past her.
Ling-Vannerus joined in the pursuit. He says, I... got my orders to mop up the ravine with troops K and E, who had dismounted and kept up incessant firing at the escaped redskins. We advanced in firing-line and stepped watchfully and laboriously down the almost vertical sidesof the "hole." Everywhere reigned the silence of death; the destroying angel had forsooth passed here!
When the shelling started, all red women and children in the camp had immediately taken to flight. Unrestrainably, they threw themselves into carts or rushed desperately away---some up the valley to the right, others again in wild panic toward the ravine down whose sides they blindly rode, drove, or precipated themselves, only to be massacred against the rugged rocks at the bottom or to be shot down without mercy by the skirmish line on the opposite side. Here we found them now in big heaps, piled on each other. Women, the children in their arms, yound and old, horses and mules in various positions, broken carts and clothing. More scattered, the warriors lay on their faces, still clutching their weapons.
There lies a whole family, except the father, under an overturned cart body, with the horses still in their shafts; with their legs crushed, they are writing in agony. There a papoose cries by its mother's breast which cold and insensible, can nourish no more; there lies a young girl with her long hair sticky of blood, hiding her mutilated face---they are all lying there in death's unspeakable majesty. An here lies the beautiful young squaw woman whom yesterday I offered a cigarette dying, with both her legs shot off. She lies there without wailing and greets me with a faint smile on her pale lips.
As the firing subsided, Starr and others went down along the ravine and cried to the Indians that if they were living to sit up and be saved. He saw a few women sit up, all badly wounded. He looked into the ravine and saw mwn and women and children...piled up dead and dying.
After the word had been given for them to sit up and be saved, one wounded man who raised up as well as he could, bracing himself with his hands behind him, was shot dead by some soldiers coming down the ravine from above. Perhaps theses soldiers had not heard the call to sit up and be saved; nevertheless, they were killing everything clean as they went.
Starr said that thirty to forty were taken prisoner and most were wounded. Most of these were taken back to the agency but not all.
There was at least one other account of a summary execution of a Lakota. While on the battlefield, Brings It found her grandfather. His thigh was shattered, so he was laying sideways, smoking his pipe. And just then, they heard some wagons coming to load the wounded and take them to Pine Ridge. They told her grandpa to get up, but his thigh was too shattered. So the soldier shot her grandpa.
A wounded woman lying in a washout right in the road and at her feet was a little baby swathed, as is their custom, and it was alive. Somebody took it...and it was saved; a little boy about two years old was lying against a bank, half sitting as though it was yet alive, and four soldiers were standing right above it. Louie and Little Bat went down, drawn by what they had heard, and found the woman and asked if she was hurt much, and if she could get up. She did not want to be moved, and said, "Those soldiers just now killed my two children (she thought both were dead) and I want to lie here and die with them." Bat went up to the soldiers and, in his forcible way, gave them a berating and made them go away.
Reporter Allen surveyed what had once been a battlefield. As rest restored normal, he wryly admits, I concluded that in my flight the chance of being scared to death was about equal to that of being struck by bullets. As he wandered through the bullet-riddled camp, the sound of rifle fire could be heard at intervals and at various places along the south front of the field...Desultory rifle shots could be heard at short intervals, aimed wherever a blanket was seen to move regardless of what or who might be under it.
Gazing upon the ghastly picture before me, I felt an impulse of savagery well up and leap the faint line of demarcation between civilian and savage foes engaged in the fierce combat of a life-and-death struggle. My impulse was not so very viscious, however. I just wished to walk among the bodies and indulge in a little gloating over the fate that had overtaken the more intelligent but fanatical leaders who had brought these poor misguided people to their death.
The burial of the dead [Indians] took place on the knoll where the Hotchkiss guns had rained fire into the valley. There, Mooney says, a long trench was dug, and into it was thrown all the bodies, piled one upon the other like so much cordwood, until the pit was full. When the earth was heaped over them and the funeral was complete, many of the bodies were stripped by the whites, who went out in order to get the Ghost shirts, and the frozen, bodies were thrown into the trench stiff and naked. They were only dead Indians. As one of the burial party said, "It was a thing to melt the heart of a man, if it was of stone, to see those little children, with their bodies shot to pieces, thrown naked into the pit."
SOUVENIER HUNTERS
Reporter Charles W. Allen returned to the site of the massacre, but his intention was to hunt for souveniers.
Allen was not the only scavenger to visit the valley; the Lakotas would be fighting for years to regain lost family possessions. One of their proponents in this quest was Major James McLaughlin.
ONE EDITOR'S TAKE ON THE MASSACRE
As the burial of the Lakotas took place, the "Chadron Democrat's editorial writer jeered: For once it has occurred that more Indians than soldiers have been slain, and we doubt not but that either General Miles or Brooke will be cashiered from the service as was General Harney for such pitiless bloodshed. Nothing will be done about the poor soldiers who were slain, but the Indian department is undoubtedly already getting in its work upon some crank of a congressman to present a bill before that August and wise body to investigate the cause that lead to the late massacre and uncalled for slaughter of such dear, good Indians as were "Tomahawk That Kills," "Moon That Steals Horses," "Scalps All," "Eagle That Skins Alive," "Hawk Burns Alive," "Gall Wants All," "Buffalo That Kills The Babe," and a host more who are now really both defacto and de jure good Indians, not made so, however, by their religious training, but by good and well-directed shots and cuts administered by the Seventh and Ninth Cavalry. We glory in the revenge of the Seventh, although they sustained a heavy loss, and notwithstanding there may have been but a few in the late fight left who belonged to the Seventh during Custer's life, they nevertheless belong by name to a regiment which was at one time commanded by a soldier of national reputation as an Indian fighter and who, in 1876, with his entire command was cut to ribbons by Sitting Bull's warriors and probably participated in by several of the Big Foot gang who bit the dust a few days ago. We predict that the killing of Big Foot and his warriors will have a telling effect on the Messiah craze, and will civilize more reds who are yet alive than all the power of God and education that has been pumped into them for the past 16 years.
THE BODY COUNT
Editorial Note* The following are several accounts of the number who died at Wounded Knee. There are many descrepencies and no figures from the varios sources agree.
On the afternoon of December 30, Miles telegraphed General Schofiels: General Brooke telegraps as follows: Colonel Forsyth says sixty-two dead Indian men were counted on the plain where the attempt was made to disarm Big Foot's band and where the fight began. On other parts of the ground, there were eighteen more. These did not include those killed in the ravines, where dead warriors were seen but not counted. Six were brought in badly wounded and six others with a party of twenty-three men and women, which Captain Jackson had to abandon when attacked by one hundred fifty Brule Indians from the agency. This accounts for ninety-two killed and leaves but a few alive and unhurt.
The women and children broke for the hills when the fight commenced and comparatively few of them were hurt and few brought in. Thirty-nine are here [at Pine Ridge] of which twenty-one are wounded. Had it not been for the attack by the Brules, an accurate account would have been made, but the ravines were not searched afterwards. The result, I think, shows very little cause for apprehension from Big Foot's band in the future.
On December 31 Forsyth revised his initial estimate in a length report that included the following:
Whites killed:
25 killed including Capt. G. D. Wallace; 6 noncommissioned officers and 18 privates
Whites wounded:
First lieutenants E.A. Garlington and J.C. Gresham; Second Lieutenant H. L. Hawthorne; 11 nonco missioned officers and 22 privates
Indians Killed:
83 bucks, in and near the camp
7 bucks, by pursuing party
Indians Wounded:
8 bucks, brought to the agency
5 bucks, abandoned by pursuing party
10 squaws and children, abandoned by pursuing party
27 squaws and children, brought to the agency
[Note: all of the white men killed or wounded were from the Seventh Cavalry, except 2nd Lt. H.L. Hawthorne and Oscar Pollack, a hospital steward].
In his report he stated that 90 Miniconjou males were killed out of an attacking force of 125. This was 35 fewer than Miles had claimed. Forsyth lists no casualties for the women and children in Big Foot's band, again insisting, From the first instant the squaws started for the hills and it is my belief that comparatively few of them were injured.
Forsyth wrote this despite knowing that nearly forty wounded Miniconjous lay dying within sight of his camp and despite allowing his officers to attack the women and children of Big Foot's band for more than four hours even though most of the men had died in the first few minutes of fighting.
On the day of the massacre, Royer telegrapher the commissioner of Indian Affairs with a more accurate count than those issued after the massacre: On Wounded Knee Creek this morning, while the soldiers were disarming Big Foot and his band after their surrender, a fight took place, which resulted in the killing of about three hundred Indians and several soldiers, including Captain Wallace, with a number wounded.
The first official army body count was made on January 3. Capt. F. A. Whitney of the Eighth Cavalry writes, I have the honor to report I have examined the ground where the fight with Big Foot's band occurred and counted the number of Indians killed and wounded, also number of ponies and horse with the following result:
82 bucks and one boy killed
2 bucks badly wounded
forty squaws killed
1 squaw wounded
1 blind squaw unhurt
4 small children and one papoose killed;
Forty bucks and seven women killed in camp; twenty-five bucks,ten women and two children in the canyon near and on one side of the camp; the balance were found in the hills; fifty-eight horses and ponies and one burro were found dead.
Whitney admits, The large number of dead animals suggests that the Hotchkiss and rifle fire were widespread and many may not have been concentrated on specific targets. There is evidence that a great number of bodies have been removed. Since the snow, wagon tracks were made near where it is supposed dead or wounded Indians had been lying. The camp and bodies of the Indians had more or less been plundered before my command arrived there. I prohibited anything being removed from the bodies of the Indians or the camp.
Whitney's account of 122 was far less than the number of bodies buried in the mass grave.
In his interview with Ricker, Joseph Horn Cloud, listing only those he knew by name, identified 185 of the dead and 103 survivors. His list is probably incomplete since it was drawn from memory.
After interviewing a number of survivors, Dr. Melvin R. Gilmore concluded, there were about four hundred people in Big Foot's band. There were 126 men, counting boys. Of the victims there were 164 bodies buried at Wounded knee. There were about one hundred survivors. The rest are not accounted for. They must have died in the prarie. Some bodies were found in Bad River, considerably more than one hundred miles away. Some of the wounded girls got back to the Cheyenne River still further away, but afterwards they died of their wounds and exposure.
General Colby confirms this, stating, Most of the women and children were found killed and wounded at a distance of from a quarter to a half mile from the camp, showing they had attempted to escape after the fight began.
Commissioner Morgan's statement agrees: Most of the men, including Big Foot, were killed around his tent, where he lay sick. The bodies of the women and children were scattered along a distance of two miles from the scene of the encounter.
After this terrible massacre, reaction to the battle among the American public was generally favorable. Twenty Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to federal soldiers. Currently, Native Americans are urgently seeking the recall of what they refer to as "Medals of Dis-Honor"