Page:A Brief History of South Dakota.djvu/191

Rh Back where they commanded the Indian camp, a battery of Hotchkiss guns had been planted, and at the first volley these guns opened fire and sent a storm of shells and bullets among the women and children who had gathered in front of the tepees. The guns poured in two-pound explosive shells at the rate of nearly fifty a minute, mowing down everything alive. In a few minutes two hundred Indian men and women and children, with sixty soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground. The tepees had been torn down by the shells and some of them were burning above the helpless wounded, and the surviving handful of Indians were flying in wild panic, pursued by hundreds of maddened soldiers. The pursuit was simply a massacre, in which fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. The bodies of the women and children were scattered along a distance of two or three miles from the scene of the encounter. The butchery was the work of new and untrained recruits, who were infuriated by the shooting down of their comrades without warning.

Thus was fought the engagement known as the battle of Wounded Knee. The next day the Indians attacked some soldiers midway between Wounded Knee and the agency, but were repulsed.

These engagements comprised all the actual fighting of the war. Within a day or two, General Miles came out and took charge of affairs, and, establishing communication with the Indian leaders, soon brought about an