Heather Cox Richardson wrote a profound history of the partisan politics that led to the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. The esteemed historian and political commentator draws on her 2010 book to offer this deep context to frame Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to protect the Medals of Honor issued to the Seventh Cavalry soldiers who slaughtered hundreds of Lakota in that massacre as a Republican incompetent honoring Republican incompetence:
It’s fitting that Hegseth, a political appointee whose tenure has been marked by incompetence, would defend the awarding of those particular Medals of Honor, because they were awarded to cover up the incompetence of political appointees that led to the deaths of at least 230 peaceful Lakotas, as well as about twenty-five soldiers who were caught in their own crossfire [Heather Cox Richardson, “September 26, 2025,” Letters from an American, 2025.09.27].
It’s not easy or wise to summarize Heather Cox Richardson. My short version: the tariff-boosting Republican Party was in trouble with the voters. Even the supposedly safe Republican Senate seats from new state South Dakota might fall to Democrats. To win public support in South Dakota, Republican President Benjamin Harrison sent troops to quell trouble stirred by his incompetent Republican appointee to oversee the Pine Ridge Reservation. But the Seventh Cavalry ended up going nuts at Wounded Knee, and Harrison needed political cover:
The outcry against this butchery started in the Army itself. Miles was incensed that the simple surrender of a peaceful band of Lakotas had become what he called a “criminal military blunder and a horrible massacre of women and children.” He demanded an inquiry into Forsyth’s actions. Miles’s report was so damning his own secretary asked him to soften it.
But President Harrison’s administration was in terrible electoral trouble, and his men wanted no part of an attack on soldiers that would imply that Harrison’s agents had first created a war and then mismanaged it. They dismissed Miles’s report with their own, which blamed the Lakotas for the massacre and concluded that the soldiers had acted the part of heroes. In spring 1891, President Harrison awarded the first of twenty Medals of Honor that would go to soldiers for their actions at Wounded Knee.
In the end, though, all of the political maneuvering by Harrison’s men came to naught. After weeks of squabbling, the South Dakota legislature rejected the Republican candidate and named an Independent senator who caucused with the Democrats. And in 1892, Harrison lost the presidency to Grover Cleveland, who promised lower tariffs and a return to civil service reform [Heather Cox Richardson, 2025.09.27].
Wounded Knee was a massacre. The issuance of Medals of Honor to the white butchers of Wounded Knee was a political ploy to distract voters from an incompetent Republican administration’s policy failures… just like Hegseth’s whitewashing endorsement of those medals.
p.s.: The independent senator chosen by the Legislature in 1891 was Congregational minister James Henderson Kyle of Aberdeen, who replaced Homestake Mining Company lawyer and Republican politician Gideon Curtis Moody. Moody County was named for the latter, even though Moody lived in Yankton and the Black Hills, never around Flandreau. Kyle’s name went to the community that the Lakota people called Pejúta Háka, or Medicine Root, about half an hour northeast of Wounded Knee. In 2021, the Medicine Root District board voted to change the name of Kyle to Little Wound, but I find online no indication that the community has held a public vote to obtain the two-thirds approval needed to obtain the court order required by law to officially change a municipality’s name.
Ironic then, that a Democratic President Jeffries will ultimately rescind those medals.