Wounded Knee Massacre Site, South Dakota

A small parking area with a sign is located the site of the famed “Battle of Wounded Knee,” where approximately 250 Lokota men, women, and children were shot by soldiers of the US Army, in 1890, in what is now largely acknowledged as a massacre. The battle took place on what had, the year before, been designated as the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, sovereign land of the Oglala Lokota. An Episcopal mission church was built next to the mass grave where many of the victims were buried, and a monument was erected at the site in 1903. Both remain, on the hill west of the parking area. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark by the US Department of Interior in 1965.