Sickles was one of 64 Medals of Honor awarded for action during the Battle of Gettysburg. The battle lasted three days and involved over 150,000 combatants.
Wounded Knee lasted about an hour and involved roughly 500 solders and 300 or 400 Sioux, most being women and children.
Sickles was a Tammany politician with all the corruption that entailed. Of all the Medals of Honor for that battle his was the most egregious, for his persistent peddling of his acts, which were insubordinate, that is direct disobedience of his orders to hold the section of Cemetery Ridge... not march out and establish a huge undefendable salient, and leave the gap in the line behind him, endangering the flank, had Longstreet been successful in sweeping the ridge getting around/through his salient could have flanked the Union lines.
Always have thought that John Buford’s holding off an entire division of Harry Heth’s until the I Corps could come up, and his pursuit after the battle of the retreating columns all the way to Warrenton, VA, merited the MOH. Lincoln did promote him to Major General, while he was dying of typhoid at 37.