[Jere]

[DeathHand]

I've posted about this battle between the US military and the Lakota Natives several times on other sites and thought I'd add some photos that weren't posted and some that were, in larger resolution.

Wounded Knee Creek was a decisive battle, or massacre, in terms of effectively ending the ongoing Sioux wars between the US and the Natives who then gave up a hopeless fight.

For all intents and purposes, it seems to have stemmed from the US becoming worried about a dance: the Ghost Dance, which the Lakota's performed. If this sort of anit-whiteman spiritual dance, and the Native logic behind it, were to spread to other tribes...well, the US just couldn't allow that happen.

An attempt to arrest Sitting Bull, a Lakota Sioux chief whom the Americans believed was spreading the ways of the Ghost Dance, resulted in him being killed.

Tensions rose and eventually led to the US military marching out and surrounding the Wounded Knee settlement with soldiers, artillery and cavalry.

Spotted Elk (aka Big Foot), the chief of the Lakota tribe at Pine Creek, was killed during the fight that ensued when the Natives were ordered to surrender their weapons. This chief had been aligned with the now deceased Sitting Bull and the Battle of Little Bighorn, where Custard was killed 14 years earlier.

The rest is well documented in the first OP of this thread.

The following images show a few scenes before fighting erupted, depictions of the fighting, scenes after the fight, and a diagram showing the positions of the US troops that had taken up positions around the tribe (I added red lines to indicate the placements of the Lakota's).

[DeathHand]

Second set of images.

Note: to see descriptions of any image just right click on an image and click "Save Image" - you don't have to save it, this will just show you the filename.