If one Googles "Wounded Knee," virtually every link in the search results will describe the event as a massacre. Since the 1970s, nearly all books, articles, and documentaries on the subject have presented the massacre narrative as an undeniable fact. However, when one examines the primary sources, one finds a very different picture of the event. 

The Wounded Knee incident occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek at the Pine Ridge agency (reservation) in South Dakota. It involved soldiers of the 7th Cavalry and a group of Indians led by a chief named Big Foot.

The authors who present the massacre narrative rarely mention that three independent, non-military eyewitnesses said the Indians fired first, just as the soldiers reported. 

The most important of the three non-military eyewitnesses was Father Francis Craft, who witnessed the fighting from close range and was wounded during the battle. Father Craft was there to serve as an interpreter. He had spent years ministering among the Indians and was well known as an ardent defender of Indian rights. Although Father Craft tried to describe the Indians' conduct as favorably as possible, he admitted that some of the younger warriors fired first, that all the soldiers whom he saw fought honorably and did not purposely try to shoot women and children, and that most of the women and children who were killed during the initial fighting were hit by errant gunfire from the warriors.

The record is clear that the soldiers had no intention of harming the Indians that morning. The soldiers believed the disarming of Big Foot's band, done in preparation for the band's temporary relocation, would be a peaceful, uneventful action. The record is equally clear that the majority of the Indians did not want trouble either. However, there were several dozen fanatical younger warriors who were determined to fight the soldiers rather than hand over their weapons. Big Foot himself tried to get those warriors under control before they opened fire on the soldiers, but they ignored him. A militant medicine man named Yellow Bird urged the younger warriors to resist the soldiers and promised them that their ghost shirts would stop bullets.

Cloman map of battlefield

Understanding the Basics

To understand the basics of the initial fighting at Wounded Knee, we must understand where the male Indians and the soldiers were located in relation to each other, and where the Indian camp and the council site were located in relation to both groups.

The council site was between the cavalry camp and the Indian camp. The council site was where the male Indians met with Colonel Forsyth and Major Whitside. The council site was where Forsyth asked the Indians to step forward and hand over their weapons or else be physically searched. The council site was where Black Coyote fired his rifle into the air while two soldiers were trying to take it from him. The council site was where the fanatical warriors pulled their rifles from under their blankets and began firing at the soldiers.

The Indian camp, where all the women and children were, was directly south and southwest from the council site. It was barely 100 yards from the council site.

The cavalry camp was north of the council site. It was about 100 yards from the council site. There were few if any soldiers in the cavalry camp when the shooting began.

Company G was about 200 yards directly east from the council site.

Companies B and K were positioned between the council site and the Indian camp. Company B was mostly west of the council site. Company K was south of the council site. Both companies were only about 25 yards from the council site.

Thus, the bullets fired by the Indians in the council area that did not hit B and K Company soldiers went straight into the Indian camp, where the women and children were. In other words, when the Indians fired at the nearby soldiers and missed, their errant shots went straight at their own women and children, as many witnesses also noted.

Father Craft confirmed that the warriors' missed shots hit their own women and children. He said the warriors "poured volley after volley into the lines of B and K Troops, their fire also mowing down like grass the crowd of their own women and children who stood in the camp looking on behind the soldiers" (Thomas Foley, At Standing Rock and Wounded Knee: The Journals and Papers of Father Francis M. Craft, 1888-1890, The Arthur H. Clarke Company, 2009, p. 308).

Conversely, during the first few minutes of the fighting, when the soldiers first fired back at the Indians, none of their shots would have been aimed in the direction of the Indian camp. Furthermore, many of the B Company and G Company soldiers held their fire for fear of hitting each other, since they were facing each other on opposite sides of the council area.

A key part of the massacre narrative is the claim that most of the soldiers who were killed or wounded were accidentally hit by gunfire from other soldiers, but, in point of fact, relatively few of the soldiers were hit by friendly fire--some were, but most were not.