Yup

The story of America is the story of conquest. Of new lands and peoples. Sometimes when reading about this discovery and subsequent conquest of the New World the Native people that lived there are often overlooked. Not ignored entirely but brushed aside. As obstacles to progress. They're fate is acknowledged haphazardly but rarely told for what it was, a genocide. Granted using a modern term for something that happened in the past to sometimes frowned upon anyone who examined the practices and policies the Spanish, the British, and later the Americans would certainly come to the same conclusion. Right now I am reading about the end of the era of resistance among the Indians tribes with the massacre at Wounded knee. The years of the late 1880s had brought despair among the Sioux at Pine ridge agency. A drought had wiped out they're crops and the government had cut they're beef rations. They had once been a self-sufficient people now forced to live on government handouts. The feeling of despair spread across all of the Western Indians on the reservation and a prophet started to emerge. A Paiute Wavoka, had told his followers that if they would dance a dance he had shown them called the 'ghost dance,' that the great spirit would wipe out all the whites and the plains would once again be abundant with buffalo. That family and friends who had died would come back. A compelling message, especially in light of the dire circumstances they faced. But from what I have read about it I think the Indian agents and government officials wanted to provoke an incident. It was Custer's old 7th cavalry that participated in the massacre, and it does not seem to be a stretch to think they wanted revenge for the loss at Little bighorn.