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Wounded Knee Monument is a burying ground for those who were massacred at Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge, Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota.
Wounded Knee, hamlet and creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, U.S. It was the site of two conflicts, in 1890 and 1973, between Native Americans and the U.S. federal government.
On December 29, 1890, approximately 150–300 Lakota men, women, and children were killed by U.S. troops during the Wounded Knee Massacre, an episode that concluded the federal government’s military campaigns against the Plains Indians. Seeking some hope for improving their difficult living conditions, such as hunger and starvation caused by the reduction in the size of their reservation in the late 1880s, the Lakota responded affirmatively to Wovoka, a Paiute prophet who promised the disappearance of the white man and a return of native lands and buffalo if certain rites and dances were performed. These rites, known as the Ghost Dance, caused alarm among white settlers and led to federal military intervention.
The U.S. Army subdued the Ghost Dance movement, but Chief Sitting Bull was killed by reservation police while being arrested on December 14, 1890, and a few hundred Lakota people left their reservation at Pine Ridge, seeking to hide in the Badlands. Technically classified as hostiles because they had left the reservation, they gathered around the Miniconjou Lakota chief Sitanka, also known as Big Foot. However, they surrendered quietly to pursuing troops of the 7th Cavalry on the night of December 28. Following an overnight encampment near Wounded Knee Creek, Sitanka’s group was surrounded and nearly disarmed when a scuffle broke out over a rifle that a Lakota refused to give up. A shot went off within the group of struggling men, and, from close range, the soldiers, supported by Hotchkiss machine guns, fired into the Lakota, killing many of them instantly. Those who fled were pursued, and some were killed miles from the camp. Although the total number of Native people who died during the Wounded Knee Massacre is unknown, 146 men, women, and children were buried by the U.S. Army in a mass grave soon after the massacre. At least 28 U.S. soldiers were killed.
"Wounded Knee", an 870-acre (350 ha) area was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1965.
Along with all other National Historic Landmarks, it was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, when that program was inaugurated in 1966. It is listed as "Wounded Knee Battlefield".