The Pentagon is now conducting an expedited review of the awards of Medals of Honor to soldiers who took part in the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee, during which Seventh Cavalry soldiers killed an estimated 150-300 members of the Lakota Sioux Native American tribe. The rushed nature of the review reeks of political partisanship designed to help win votes for the Democrat nominee in November.
This is not about the wisdom or ethics of that operation. Virtually all Americans understand that the United States government behaved dishonorably on numerous occasions during its relations with Native Americans as we expanded westward—including regularly signing and then violating solemn treaties. Congress often undermined treaties by refusing to appropriate sufficient funds to implement them. But I have seen no evidence that any of the soldiers whose decorations are being “reviewed” were involved in the decisions that led to the “massacre.”
The opening of the fight at Wounded Knee” (1891). Public domain.
Wounded Knee should be viewed in context. At that time, the Medal of Honor was the only Army decoration for heroism and did not require anything near the level of valor required to earn that award today. Very importantly, using force to seize territory was the accepted method of acquiring land and was widely practiced around the world and among Native American tribes as well. The Lakota Sioux were among its most vicious practitioners.
War and other violence were common among Native Americans long before the Europeans arrived. This included ceremonially torturing captives to death and other forms of extreme brutality. Stronger tribes seized land and enslaved members of weaker tribes. (Even the Maya, known for their advanced contributions in areas such as astronomy, are now believed to have been “a very violent, warmongering society.”) The Lakota Sioux—whose members died at Wounded Knee—were especially violent, driving plains tribes such as the Blackfeet and Crow westward as they stole their lands.
On August 5, 1873, a large Band of Sioux warriors attacked a much smaller group of Pawnee in Nebraska and massacred a large number. Nearly 75% of their victims were women and children. (An after-action account of Wounded Knee found most of the dead were adult males.) The Sioux raped and captured women, and the Pawnee chief reportedly killed his own child to keep the Sioux from torturing and dismembering him. Lakota also brutally attacked settlers.
According to the respected Oxford Companion to American Military History, horticultural Native American tribes viewed the Lakota Sioux as a greater threat than the expanding United States and “felt that a military alliance with the United States against the Lakota Sioux offered their best hope for survival.”
It is important to understand what really happened at Wounded Knee. The violence resulted not from orders to attack a peaceful village and “kill everything that moved” but essentially from an accident.
Many of the more serious accounts of the incident attach primary responsibility to a government bureaucrat named Daniel Royer, whom President Harrison appointed as the Indian Agent for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where the tragedy occurred. Royer began his work about two months before the tragic massacre.
According to a study by the South Dakota Historical Society, “Royer was totally inexperienced and incompetent in Indian affairs” and “panicked and called for troops” to deal with a dispute. He was removed from office nine days following the massacre.
The Royer order was that troops were to enter an area that the Lakotas occupied and search for concealed weapons they had promised to surrender. One warrior resisted, and in a struggle over his rifle, it accidentally discharged—apparently leading the other soldiers to believe they were under fire—and an intense battle ensued.
In many ways, it appears very much like the 1970 “Kent State massacre“ eight decades later, when a student who was taking photographs to help police identify lawbreakers found himself surrounded by an angry mob threatening his life, drew a concealed revolver, and fired multiple warning shots. Hearing gunfire coming from the protesters, the national guardsmen believed they were under attack and fired into the crowd.
I certainly am not justifying either incident, but both appear to have resulted from accidents rather than planned decisions to initiate hostilities.
If anyone needs evidence that this review is being done for partisan political purposes, the fact that it is being incredibly rushed and requires the results to be submitted no later than October 15, 2024—three weeks to the day before the election—and that the investigation must be coordinated with the President’s Domestic Policy Council would seem to indicate something other than a calm reassessment. Why the rush?
Why would Secretary Austin require that a Defense Department panel reviewing military awards given more than a century ago be completed so hastily and be coordinated with the White House Domestic Policy Council, which is headed by Neera Tanden? Tanden has worked in every Democrat presidential campaign for the past 35 years and openly despises Donald Trump. She was Biden’s first nominee to be OMB Director but withdrew her name when even Senate Democrats would not give her unanimous support. NPR described her as “an outspoken partisan warrior” and “Biden’s Most Controversial Cabinet Pick.” It noted she had compared Republican senators to “Voldemort and Vampires.” Why involve her in this review?
After more than a century, there are no longer any detailed records about each soldier’s conduct at the Battle. It might be extremely unjust to rescind medals issued to soldiers present at the Battle of Wounded Knee. Thus, it makes little sense for the Pentagon to modify decisions regarding individual decorations under circumstances about which we can only speculate after more than thirteen decades—much less for it to do so hastily to meet a partisan political deadline.
Based upon an attachment to Secretary Austin’s memorandum, we know the reasons some of the medals were awarded. One recipient “volunteered twice” to rescue “wounded comrades under fire from the enemy.” Another “went to the rescue of the commanding officer who had fallen severely wounded, picked him up, and carried him out of range of the hostile guns.” Another continued to fight bravely “after having been severely wounded through the lung.” These troops exhibited courage under fire regardless of the policy decisions that led them to that battle.
My purpose is not to defend what happened in 1890 in the southwestern corner of South Dakota. My concern is the politicization of our military under the current administration. The latest campaign to hastily rescind presumptively legitimate decorations from dead soldiers to influence a presidential election should be unacceptable.
Professor Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he taught for more than three decades prior to his 2020 retirement.
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