Posted on 09/29/2025 12:54:48 PM PDT by Miami Rebel
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said that Medals of Honor for soldiers who took part in an 1890 massacre of Native Americans would not be revoked.
More than 300 Lakota Sioux men, women and children were killed by U.S. Army soldiers on Dec. 29, 1890, in one of the deadliest attacks on Native Americans by the United States military. The Lakota people had gathered to resist government control in an area of South Dakota that is now part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.....
In 2019, Democratic lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, introduced legislation to revoke the medals from the 20 soldiers involved in the massacre at Wounded Knee after a yearslong pressure campaign by members of the Lakota tribe.
Congress has rescinded more than 900 Medals of Honor since a law passed in 1916 created a board of retired military officers to review previous awards. In 1990, Congress apologized to the descendants of the Native Americans killed and injured at Wounded Knee.
The campaign to remove the medals gained momentum in 2020, when historical and systemic racism received intense attention. Many of the medals given out for the U.S. Army’s Indian Wars for land and resources in the West were for violent acts against Native Americans. .... “Under my direction, we’re making it clear without hesitation that the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their medals, and we’re making it clear that they deserved those medals,” Mr. Hegseth said in the video......
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They wandered off the reservation when told not to do so, after a long series of Indian depredations that usually included torture, gang rape and the indiscriminate killing of women and children.
The soldiers at Wounded Knee also included elements of the 7th Cavalry who would not have been inclined to treat the Sioux lightly.
There are lots of photos of the torture inflicted on captured US Army soldiers. They were savages, and got what they deserved.
“and we’re making it clear that they deserved those medals”
For what, exactly?
I hope Hegseth was referring to those who took part in the battle and not those who slaughtered those who stayed in the camp.
That is my question as well.
Just one one of several massacres by the US gov’t back then as they claim to bring civilization to the natives.
The Times uses the highest estimate of indian dead of course.
“The end result was that some 39 US soldiers were killed along with somewhere between 146 and 300 Indians, depending on the source. William Peano, a member of the burial party who was half Sioux himself, recorded the bodies of 102 men and women of adult age, 24 old men, 7 old women, six boys between five and eight, and seven babies under two. That’s far fewer than the more than 300 that some people claim.”
Yep.
All involved are dead as are their children and grandchildren.
Sometimes the best thing you can do with the past is let it go.
It was real life, and messy, it always is when the enemy forces insist on attacking and fighting when their women and children are with them.
“There were indeed women and children killed, but not intentionally. Many were hit by crossfire from both sides. The Indians were firing at US soldiers who had disbursed throughout the camp while searching for weapons. Moreover, there are accounts of women engaging in the fighting as well.”
At all.
Exactly.
I’m with you on this one.
Perpetual victimhood requires bigger numbers and if you repeat it enough, it becomes the “offical” number no matter what records there are.
Again, why do we keep apologizing for ancient history? The medals were given and to take them back now is foolish.
Why must we keep erasing our history for a politically correct version that blames us for everything?
Morgan Freeman suggested in 2005 that the way to end racism is to "stop talking about it".
“He who owns (Or wants to extract) gold controls all the rules” “Off the reservation” “Might makes right” “US government is not to be trusted” “US government sucks, is hypocritical, greedy, composed of grifters, backtracks, reneges on contracts, etc... Sums up the relationship with native “Indians” in the 19th century. Not perfect, however, far from good.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, 417
I have repeatedly suggest that everyone stand in a circle and pass a quarter to the person that is to their left.
Now that all past ancestral debts are paid let's get on with life.
If the people who committed the crimes are alive, fine, punish them. If the people who were harmed are still alive then see that they get as much justice and restitution as possible. But when all involved are dead you have to stop.
You can not apologize for things that you did not do. Expecting people to do so just makes them resent you.
You can not forgive an offense that was not against you. Trying to do so just leaves you feeling slightly empty and unsatisfied.
Let. It. Go.
How charmingly 19th Century of you.
THEY we were the savages, not us. Primarily because we were clever enough to label our victims.
just think if we take back these we will have the precedent to take back all those presidential medals of freedom that Biden and Obama handed out
And even as savage as the Europeans of the 17th century still were, inured to public executions, burnings at the stake, etc., when the French and English encountered the Eastern Woodlands Indians, early European settlers were shocked by the savagery the Indians showed one another. The way the Hurons and the Iroquois slow-roasted opponents over a low fire (and the latter many a French Jesuit) formed a particularly strong impression.
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