The Final Surrender

With some 500 Army troopers preventing the escape of the Indians at Wounded Knee camp, Col. James Forsyth ordered the captives to surrender their weapons.  The Indians refused and the colonel grew impatient.  He ordered his men to search the tepees and the persons of the Indians themselves.  To lay hands on a warrior was both dangerous and insulting. 

Black Coyote, a young Sioux warrior, was therefore insulted by the Army's treatment and fired a wild shot during the ensuing scuffle.  The Army, of course, took that as a call for a murderous, close-range assault.  The Indians fired back and it became a blood bath from thereon.  From a low hill, four Hutchkiss guns took out the fleeing Indians - men, women and children until the snows turned red.

Twenty-five officers and troops were killed and 39 wounded.  The Indian count was 153-300, depending on whose estimate you believe.  Civilians were paid $2 per body to bury the bodies. One member of the burial party put it this way, "It was a thing to melt the heart of a man, if made of stone.  To see these little children with their bodies shot to pieces and thrown into the pit."

Those Indians at Pine Ridge Reservation, some 4,000 of them, gathered at White Clay Creek and surrounded the Army as it approached.  Eventually another cavalry came to their rescue.  General Miles surrounded the village and sent men to talk to the Sioux Chiefs.  He got them to surrender without further bloodshed on January 15, 1891, ending the war with the Native Americans.  It was not a proud era in America history...

Next time...Railroads change the Nation
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On March 26, 1872, An earthquake felt from Mexico to Oregon rocks the Owens Valley in California, killing 30 people. People hundreds of miles away in Tijuana, Mexico, felt the shaking. It is estimated that it had a magnitude of 7.8. One of most famous accounts of this earthquake came from explorer and scientist John Muir, the man who was instrumental in the establishment of Yosemite National Park.

Geronimo's Vanishing Act

In 1884, trouble erupted among the peaceful White Mountain, Apache tired of being hungry and living like captives.  Geronimo slipped into Mexico along with 74 warriors to avoid arrest.  At this same time General Crook, named "Grey Wolf" by the Apache was reassigned to Arizona where the Apache trusted him.  He decided it was time to get tough with the corrupt Indian Agents but along with that he punished Apache for domestic abuse and drunkenness.

General Crook and his Apache Scouts

Crook was prepared to deal with the war leaders in the Sierra Madre by recruiting companies of tough, wild Apache scouts to track the warriors down.  Along with 193 Apache scouts and the cooperation of Mexico, Crook went into the Sierra Madre destroying Apache camps.  When the Apache began to surrender, Geronimo appeared among them.   That didn't last long as he led 42 warriors and 92 women and children back into Mexico.  The same scenario happened again the next year.  Geronimo talked peace with Crook in March of 1886, but the very next day he vanished again with 20 warriors and their families.

The next year, Crook was replaced by General Miles, who sent 5000 troops against the warring raiders.  Miles made two important decisions - one was harsh and unjust, one offered peace.  First Miles rounded up all the reservation Apache and Apache scouts who aided Crook and sent them to Florida so they could not aid Geronimo again.  Second, he met with Geronimo in September 1886 to talk peace.  Geronimo's acceptance was the end of the Apache wars along with his reign in the Apache tribe.

The Indian Rights Association along with General Crook protested the living conditions in Florida and the separation from their Apache families.  Eventually the men were reunited with their wives and children in 1887.  In 1894 they were sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma where Geronimo died in 1902, still hoping to get back to his beloved Southwest.

Next time...the Dwindling Reservations
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On March 5, 1815, Franz Anton Mesmer, a German physician who pioneered the medical field of hypnotic therapy, dies in obscurity in Meersburg, Swabia (now Germany)