US troops killed over 250 Lakota men, women and children after disarming them

On 29 December 1890, the US 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, to confiscate weapons amid fears over the Ghost Dance movement. A struggle during disarmament triggered gunfire, and troops opened fire with rifles and rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns on a camp including unarmed women and children fleeing, killing an estimated 250 to 300. It's the last major clash of the American Indian Wars, regarded by historians as a massacre, not a battle.

— Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee — Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970
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