The history of Wounded Knee
Wounded Knee is the ground in South Dakota where, on December 29, 1890, the U. S. 7th Cavalry killed between 250 and 300 Lakota men, women, and children under Spotted Elk. Mapped as a village from 1877, it became a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and, in 1973, the site of a 71-day occupation.
Wounded Knee is the site in South Dakota where, on December 29, 1890, soldiers of the U. S. 7th Cavalry surrounded a Lakota encampment led by Spotted Elk and opened fire after a disarmament attempt broke down, killing between 250 and 300 Lakota people, most of them women, children, and the elderly, and losing 25 soldiers.
Soldiers killed hundreds of Lakota men, women and children
Wounded Knee National Historic Landmark is the protected site of a massacre carried out by the United States Army. On December 29, 1890, soldiers of the Wounded Knee Massacre surrounded a Lakota encampment camped along Wounded Knee Creek. The soldiers had come to disarm the band. Somewhere in the struggle, a shot went off, and the soldiers opened fire with rifles and rapid-firing guns on the people below them. Between 250 and 300, Lakota people died, most of them women, children, and the elderly.
The soldiers suffered 25 deaths of their own. The Army later gave out 19 Medals of Honor for the killings, awards that Lakota descendants have spent decades trying to get revoked.
The dead were stripped and buried in a mass grave
The soldiers stripped the dead of their belongings and dug a mass grave on this same ground. Lakota families were not allowed to bury their own dead right away. Survivors and relatives later put up a stone monument at the grave in 1903, listing names of the fallen. That monument still stands on the site today.
Lakota tribes bought back the massacre ground in 2022
The federal government declared Wounded Knee National Historic Landmark a National Historic Landmark in 1965, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places the next year. For decades, the land itself stayed in private, non-Lakota hands, even as the graves and the history belonged to the tribes. A government review in 2010 noted that the site suffered from neglect.
The land ownership changed in 2022, when the Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes bought roughly 40 acres of the site, including the mass grave, putting the ground back under Lakota ownership for the first time since the massacre.
A 135th anniversary service marked the site's protection
On December 29, 2025, tribal leaders and federal officials gathered here for a memorial service marking the 135th anniversary of the massacre. The gathering also celebrated the signing of the Wounded Knee Memorial and Sacred Sites Act, a federal law protecting the site permanently. The land, once contested, is now secured as Lakota property.
A small museum near the site interprets the massacre for visitors today, and the 1903 monument still marks the mass grave where victims were laid.
The mass grave and its 1903 monument remain on this ground, now owned by the Lakota tribes.
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