This Day in History: December 30, 1890. On the morning of December 29, 1890, approximately 150 Lakota men, women, and children were massacred by the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Some estimates place the death toll closer to 300.
Heavy snowfall blanketed the plains that December, and the Lakota ancestors who perished were left in the brutal, frigid conditions of the reservation until a burial party arrived to inter them in a mass grave. A photograph of Chief Big Foot’s frozen, contorted body has become a powerful symbol for all American Indians, representing the tragedy and loss endured by their ancestors.
Big Foot left frozen at Wounded Knee in December 1890