Twenty soldiers who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their bravery at the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre are now under review, per an executive order from Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III.
The battle was on December 29, 1890. Soldiers from the United States Army encircled a group of Lakota people who were camping at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southeastern South Dakota. While the soldiers were attempting to disarm the camp, a shot rang out, and then the gunfire became chaotic.
While historians agree that some of the less than 40 casualties among the soldiers were caused by friendly fire, they disagree on the exact number of Lakota casualties, which ranged from 200 to 300 or even more. Some of the bodies were left to freeze for many days before they were deposited into a mass grave by a burial crew led by the military.
Despite Maj. Gen. Nelson Miles’s condemnation of the massacre, the Army decided to support medals for some of the soldiers due to the prevailing racism and politics of the time. The men accountable for the event were under his command in the Division of the Missouri.
Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered the Defense Department to examine the circumstances surrounding the Medal of Honor recipients to verify that no troops were decorated for conduct unbecoming of the nation’s highest military distinction.
Members of the Lakota tribe were apprehended by the 7th U.S. Calvary Regiment on December 29, 1890, for engaging in “Ghost Dancing,” a Native American spiritual practice that the government outlawed.
After their arrest, they were held at a camp close to Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota by the soldiers. U.S. troops fired their weapons in an effort to disarm Lakota Tribe members after an accidental discharge.
Over 250 members of the Lakota tribe were massacred in short order.
Congress officially apologized for the massacre during its 100th anniversary in 1990, but it did not rescind the medals.
In 2022, Congress approved a measure encouraging the Pentagon to review the awards.
