After disarming the 120 Sioux men and 230 women and children the Hotchkiss guns were used on them.

There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce, and the women and children of course were strewn all along the circular village until they were dispatched. Right near the flag of truce a mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing, and that especially was a very sad sight. The women as they were fleeing with their babes were killed together, shot right through, and the women who were very heavy with child were also killed. All the Indians fled in these three directions, and after most all of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys who were
not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there.

-American Horse of the Oglala Sioux, 1891

The 300 dead from Indian families with nothing more than their feet to run with had been encircled by a total command strength of 487 well armed professional military men .

Soldiers pose with three of the four Hotchkiss Guns used against the Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek December 29, 1890. Rapid fire Hotchkiss Mountain Cannons. These guns fire explosive shells weighing 2 pounds 10 ounces at the rate of 50 per minute and had an effective range of 4,200 yards.

The caption on the photograph reads:

"Famous Battery "K" of the 1st Artillery These brave men and the Hotchkiss guns that Big Foot's Indians thought were toys, Together with the fighting 7th what's Left of Gen. Custer's boys, Sent 200 Indians to that Heaven which the ghost dancer enjoys. This checked the Indian noise, And Gen. Miles with staff Returned to Illinois.
A fine dedication to the men who celebrated the night before the killing with a smuggled barrel of rum. The Army units included the seventh US Cavalry and Light Battery E of the 1st Artillery.

.WHAT COULD THESE GUNS DO?

"The terrible effect may be judged from the fact that one woman survivor, Blue Whirlwind...received fourteen wounds, while each of her two little boys was also wounded by her side..." (James Mooney, 1896, The Ghost Dance Religion)

"The aged Eagle Elk later recalled one of many personal tragedies. He saw a Lakota woman holding a child under her blanket and she was crying. Not until she looked up did Eagle Elk recognize her as a young girl he had known in the Grand-mother's land: "O, Shonka' kan! Shonka' kan!, They have killed him! They have killed him!". Eagle Elk put her on his horse and led them away, and all the while the girl held the child close under her blanket, crying hard - it was a little boy and he was dead." (Colin Taylor, The Warriors of the Plains, 1975, p140)

20 congressional medals of honor were awarded for the slaughter of over 300 defenseless Sioux.

A survivor speaks of the day the soldiers killed his wife, mother and child.

return to Wounded Knee, "They Died for Religious Freedom, Mass Grave in America"

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