Wounded Knee Medals of Honor come under scrutiny as massacre is revisited

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has launched a review that could revoke 20 Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers involved in the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, marking the military’s latest effort to acknowledge that some medal recipients and memorials don’t measure up to standards of valor and honor.

Since 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, the military has increasingly sought to reckon with vestiges of racism. It has erased the names of treasonous Confederate officers from some of its most iconic bases.

Now, the Pentagon is poised to strip the nation’s highest award for valor from soldiers who slaughtered Native American non-combatants, including women and children at Wounded Knee Creek.

Those actions come as the military increasingly diversifies. More than 40% of troops identify as people of color, according to the Pentagon.

On July 19, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the review by five experts to examine the actions of 20 soldiers involved in the fighting at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota on Dec. 29, 1890. Austin directed the panel to present him with recommendations by Oct. 15 on each medal awarded.

Austin’s order comes more than three decades after the U.S. Senate declared the battle to be a massacre. The Army killed as many as 375 Native American men, women and children, according to a 1990 Senate resolution. The review follows more recent attempts in Congress that have failed to garner enough support to force the military to account for Medals of Honor issued at Wounded Knee.

Austin’s order is especially significant in part because the Medal of Honor has become imbued over the years with a reverence bordering on the sacred, according to a senior Defense official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

“The Medal of Honor is much more than being in combat and doing well,” the official said. “The Medal of Honor goes to those who decide to do much, much more than fight. They display honor, gallantry – a word we don’t use every day. There’s a case to be made that there was no honor present at Wounded Knee that day. That’s why we need this review.”

What happened at Wounded Knee Creek

In 1890, a government Indian Affairs agent misinterpreted a Lakota Sioux religious revival ceremony known as a “Ghost Dance” as a call for insurrection, according to a 2024 University of Oklahoma College of Law paper by Dwight Mears, an Army combat veteran and former professor at West Point.

President Benjamin Harrison ordered the Army to prevent an uprising in South Dakota. The Seventh Cavalry arrived at Wounded Knee Creek and sought to disarm the Lakota. A gun discharged during that attempt followed by bitter fighting.

The battle shifted to a ravine. It ended when soldiers fired cannons at Native Americans seeking shelter.

Allegations of non-combatant deaths soon emerged. Maj. Gen. Nelson Miles relieved the Seventh Cavalry commander and ordered an investigation. Miles wrote to his superiors and expressed his “strongest disapproval” over the killing of non-combatants.

In a private letter Miles wrote, “I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee.”

Mears cited the Army’s latest historical account of the day. The first shot fired might have been an accident, the result of a soldier trying to disarm a Lakota. “But whatever the source, it led to indiscriminate firing from soldiers and some return fire from the Lakota. In the ensuing action, many Lakota men, women and children sought to escape via ravines that cut through the area. The soldiers also employed artillery despite the presence of numerous noncombatants.”

When it was over, as many as 300 Lakota had been killed, including women and children, according to Army historians. There were 25 soldiers killed, some likely by friendly fire.

The Wounded Knee site became a place of remembrance for Native Americans, and the massacre a rallying cry in struggles for Native American rights, according to the Library of Congress .

Why Medals of Honor were awarded

At the time, the Medal of Honor was the only one available to award to soldiers. It would be decades before other medals such as the Distinguished Service Cross and Silver and Bronze Stars awarded.

The guidelines for awarding the medal had evolved from the Civil War when it was established and required soldiers to have faced combat.

By 1916, Congress intervened to establish standards for the Medal of Honor and authorized a board to consider revoking medals from recipients who didn’t measure up. That review resulted in more than 900 Medals of Honor being rescinded. Most of those taken back had been awarded during the Civil War to soldiers who had re-enlisted.

What the Pentagon review is trying to accomplish

Austin ordered the panel to look at each soldier’s actions during the engagement at Wounded Knee, according to the memo establishing the review. He tasked the Army with producing each soldier’s personnel file, and reports and investigations into the actions during the battle. The panel will consider the standards that applied when the medal was issued and recommend revocation of medals for soldier who didn't qualify. At the time, Army regulations required soldiers to avoid civilian casualties when possible.

Austin identified “disqualifying actions” that would revoke a medal, including intentionally attacking civilians, murder and rape.

Some of the Medal of Honor recipients at Wounded Knee also appear to have failed to meet the requirements of valor of their day, according to Mears. Mears found that two soldiers might have their medals revoked because their actions, while not criminal, failed to meet the standard of distinguished conduct. One of them, Private Matthew Hamilton, was awarded the Medal of Honor for “rounding up and bringing to the skirmish line a stampeded pack mule.”

If a soldier did act honorably at Wounded Knee, rendering medical aid under fire, for instance, he should be allowed to retain his medal, the senior Defense official said. But any dishonorable action should result in revocation, the official said.

“This is tied up in the military’s review of renaming bases and the placement of statues celebrating the Confederacy,” the official said. “Some will view it as trying to rewrite history or being woke. In this case, that’s not a valid concern. Ultimately, nobody can view actions at Wounded Knee as something to be proud of. No reading of history, no historical contextualization, can rationalize actions on that day.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Wounded Knee Medals of Honor come under scrutiny as massacre is revisited