While this was going on, other troops operated the Hotchkiss guns and sent a storm of shells and bullets among the women and children standing or running about the tipis. Mooney says “the guns poured in two-pound explosive shells at the rate of fifty per minute, mowing down everything alive.
“The terrible effect may be judged from the fact that one woman survivor, Blue Whirlwind, with whom the author conversed, received fourteen wounds, while each of her two little boys were also wounded by her side. In a few minutes 200 Indian men, women and children, with sixty soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground, the tipis had been torn down by the shells and some of them were burning above the helpless wounded, and the surviving handful of Indians were flying in wild panic to the shelter of the ravine, pursued by hundreds of maddened soldiers and followed up by a raking fire from the Hotchkiss guns, which had been moved into position to sweep the ravine.
“There can be no question that the pursuit was simply a massacre, where fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. On this point such a careful writer as Herbert Welsh says: ‘From the fact that so many women and children were killed, and that their bodies were found far from the scene of action, and as though they were shot down while flying, it would look as though blind rage had been at work, in striking contrast to the moderation of the Indian police at the Sitting Bull fight when they were assailed by women.’ The testimony of American Horse and other friendlies is strong in the same direction. Commissioner Morgan in his official report says that ‘Most of the men, including Big Foot, were killed around his tent, where he lay sick. The bodies of the women and children were scattered along a distance of two miles from the scene of the encounter’.”
I agree with Mooney, that a man should not criticize the soldiers of his own country. As for the shooting of armed warriors, we will all give assent. As to the murder of women and children, whose only thought was to escape with their lives, one may not trust himself to write in moderation. The Indians told me that many of the Seventh Cavalry troops cried out, “Remember Custer,” as they pursued little boys and girls and destroyed them. We might as well draw the veil of charity over the concluding scene—the pursuit and the butchery.
There was one heroic character, Father Kraft, of the Catholic mission, Pine Ridge. He spoke Sioux fluently and endeavored to stop the fight. He was stabbed through the lungs, yet with bullets flying about him, he administered the last rites of the church to the dying until he fell unconscious. Mooney pays him a deserved tribute. The Indians were so excited that they did not recognize him, claiming that he had on a soldier’s overcoat because of the cold. Mooney affirms this is not correct, but that he wore his priestly robes.
The immediate result of the massacre of Wounded Knee was the stampeding of all the Indians into the hills. They believed that they were to be murdered.
General Miles adopted harsh measures against the Indians and they soon surrendered all their guns and came in to the agency.
Doctor McGillicuddy, the former Agent at Pine Ridge, who was entirely familiar with the events, stated to Mooney on January 15, 1891, “Up to date there has been neither a Sioux outbreak nor war. No citizen in Nebraska or Dakota has been killed, molested, or can show the scratch of a pin, and no property has been destroyed off the reservation. Only a single non-combatant was killed by the Indians, and that was close to the agency. The entire time occupied by the campaign, from the killing of Sitting Bull to the surrender at Pine Ridge, was only thirty-two days. The late hostiles were returned to their homes as speedily as possible.”
The Indians quit, but the white people did not. On January 11th, some white people led by three brothers named Culbertson,[[19]] pursued an aged Oglala, who was a very friendly Indian, for many miles. His name was Few Tails, and he was accompanied by his wife, another Indian named One Feather, his wife and two children. They had been hunting in the Black Hills and had a pass from the agency. They were returning in two wagons loaded with meat. The Culbertson brothers and these other white men fired on Few Tails, killing that Indian and both ponies attached to that wagon. His wife jumped out and received two bullets, bringing her down. Mooney says that the murderers then attacked the other wagon shooting the wife of One Feather, but as she was not badly hurt, she drove away as rapidly as possible and the Indian leaped upon one of the spare ponies and held off the white men for eight or ten miles. They again came up, and he turned and fought them off while his wife drove ahead with the wagon.
The senseless panic had seized upon all settlers in the country because of the Ghost dance and the Wounded Knee fight. This is illustrated by Mooney’s concluding description of the first part of the fight.