Miles was a staff officer under General O. Howard. He was wounded four times and himself received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Miles had successfully defeated Crazy Horse who was killed by a bayonet in the back while a POW at Ft. Robinson, one year after the defeat at the Little Bighorn.

The Indian Rights Association criticized him for being unjust by sending his own Apache scouts off to prison at Fort Marion, Florida in 1886. Despite these charges he was still given command of the entire Division of the Missouri which led him to Wounded Knee.

In the December 20, 1890 issue of Judge magazine which published a color political cartoon to expose the corruption of the reservation system. It shows a fat cat Indian agent in spats, fur coat and top hat, lugging three bags of "profits" while a gaunt-looking Indians, wrapped in a painted robe, holds a meager sack of "starvation rations" as they both stand in from of several tepees. The caption reads: "The Reason of the Indian Outbreak - General Miles declares that the Indians are starved into rebellion." Miles was seen as an Indian sympathizer, which might have fueled military resentment against him when he later charged Forsyth.

In 1895 Miles was named commander in chief of the army. He retired from the Army in 1903 with the rank of lieutenant general. But the story does not end there. In 1916, Lt. Gen. Nelson A. Miles was appointed president of the board of five retired generals that reviewed all of the Medal of Honors cases up to that time.

Congress had passed an act to create the Medal of Honor Roll. They were to assure that the awards were warranted and reviewed all 2,625, of which 911 were stricken from the record because they did not meet the definition of valor above and beyond the call of duty. Many had been issued for reasons of re-enlistments and special honor guards. Ironically that law stated that only those who had been involved in "actual conflict with an enemy, distinguished by conspicuous gallantry or intrepidity, at risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty" would have the honor of being on that Honor Roll. It is difficult to understand how the twenty Medals that were originally given for the massacre at Wounded Knee withstood this new review. By their own definition, the review commission should have rejected these along with the others.

It was politics back then, as it is politics today, that allowed the twenty Wounded Knee Medals of Honor to pass muster and are still being honored today as they remain on the Congressional Medal of Honor List. Ironically, this is the most Medals given, followed by the eighteen Medals of Honor given for the Battle of Little Big Horn. In 1917 a delegation of the Minniconjou survivors of Wounded Knee visited Washington, DC. Apparently, upon hearing of their mission General Miles felt compelled to write to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to tell his side of the story of Wounded Knee. I found a copy of this letter on the Internet but there was no reference as to where the original is located. However, it contains some interesting items. He calls the Ghost Dance movement the "Messiah craze" that he feels was the result of "misrepresentations of white men" who "wrote secret messages to different tribes" promising a return of the "Happy Hunting Grounds." (23) In a letter to the to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs dated March 13, 1917, Lt. Gen. Nelson A. Miles stated, "not only the warriors but the sick Chief Big Foot, and a large number of Women and children who tried to escape by running and scattering over the prairie were hunted down and killed." (24) The press at the time capitalized on the mistaken notion that Wovoka, the Paiute man who had the original visions that led to the Ghost Dance, claimed to be the Messiah. This image promoted more resentment against the Indians. Many reporters were on the scene of the massacre, some even participated in the actual killing. The media had a role in perpetuating hatred towards the Lakota and helped to justify the massacre.

As result of some abuses during the Indian Wars the army added new regulation to clarify who was entitled to receive the award. The following phrase was added to army regulations: "Neither a Medal of Honor nor a Certificate of Merit will be awarded in any case when the service of the person recommended, subsequent to the time when he distinguished himself, has not been honorable." (25) The Army further modified the regulations on the Medal of Honor to include the following stipulations:

(a) Medals of Honor will not be awarded to officers or enlisted men except for distinguished bravery or conspicuous gallantry, which shall have manifested in action by conduct that distinguishes a soldier above his comrades, and that involves risk of life, or the performance of more than ordinarily hazardous duty. Recommendations for the award will be governed by this interpretation of extraordinary merit.

(b) Recommendations should be made only by the officer in command at the time of the 'action,' or by an officer having personal cognizance of the specific act for which the medal is granted. The recommendation must be accompanied by a detailed recital of the circumstances, and by certificates of officers, or affidavits of enlisted men, who were eye-witnesses of the act. The testimony must. . . describe specifically the act or acts by which the person in whose behalf the recommendation is made 'most distinguished' himself, and the facts in the case must be further attested by the official reports of the action. . ." (26)

On April 27, 1916 Congress approved an act which provided for the creation of a "Medal of Honor Roll" upon which honorably discharged medal recipients who had earned the medal in combat and had attained the age of 65 years were to be recorded. The act required a standard of excellence in order to be included in this exclusive commemoration. Those requirements stated that the only ones to be on the Honor Roll was those who met the definition of valor above and beyond the call of duty. To this day the twenty names of the "Wounded Knee heroes" continue to be listed. This is more unusual when you consider the fact that the images of the 1913 holocaust of the death of one million Armenians at the hands of the Turks was still fresh in the American mind. The 1915 sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine and the loss of 139 Americans lives caused a moral outrage in this country. Innocent civilians were killed in an unprovoked attack. World War I, the "Great War," in which millions were killed did not appear to force the military to rethink Wounded Knee and the mistreatment of Indians. Instead, in 1917, General Hugh L. Scott stated that ironically, Indians were patriotic soldiers during World War I, considering that only a few years earlier they were fighting the U.S. army.

The only precedence for striking names from the Medal of Honor Roll occurred in a 1916 Congressional Act. This Act provided for the appointment of the Secretary of War of a board of five retired general officers for the purpose of investigating and reporting upon past awards or issue of the medal of honor by or through the War Department. Between October 16, 1916, and January 17, 1917, all of the 2,625 Medals of Honor which had been awarded up to that time were considered by the Board. However the minutes of the review board were confidential and the little time spent on the actual reviews diminish the seriousness of the effort. On February 15, 1917, 911 names were stricken from the list. Among those who lost their medal was William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and Mary Walker, a Civil war surgeon and the only woman ever to receive the honor. Buffalo Bill had been given the Medal for his service as a scout with the Third Cavalry in Nebraska which had a skirmish with some Lakota who had stolen seven horses in 1872. Cody was considered ineligible for the Medal because he was a civilian.

Buffalo Bill Cody was involved in Wounded Knee to a degree. He was sent to try to talk Sitting Bull into calming down. He was also traveling with a troupe of Lakota in his Wild West Show. His hired Indians were asked to swear allegiance to the federal government and were used as "role models" to visit with the Ghost Dancers and try to convince them that resistance against the whites was futile. After the killings at Wounded Knee, Cody sought permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to hire some of the known Ghost Dancers for his traveling troupe. Ever the showman, Cody realized that these Indians would be a great drawing card. He reasoned that it would be important to remove these potential trouble makers from the reservation. Miles had the same idea, but for different reasons. He removed thirty Lakota with him when he returned to his headquarters in Chicago. He wanted to hold them at Fort Sheridan to prevent any further outbreaks. Miles wanted Cody to hire the prisoners he held and take them to Europe. They were to be overseas nearly a year. On April 1, 1891 Cody, with 21 Ghost Dance prisoners and 75 other Lakotas headed by steamer for Germany. Upon their return, Kicking Bear, the principle Lakota Ghost Dance disciple, and ten other "ringleaders" were detained and not allowed to go back to their reservation.

The Medals given for Wounded Knee withstood the review and were still considered valid. Where was the gallantry and intrepidity when women, children, including toddlers and infants were shot at point blank range in this homicidal craze for revenge. Clearly, this was not heroism, it was nothing short of cold-blooded murder. The recommendations for the Medals of Honor for Wounded Knee passed through the Army chain of command. First the troop commander made the recommendations, then most went to Colonel Forsyth for his concurrence, then to General Miles. Once he gave his recommendation, it then went to the War Department in Washington, DC. In ten of seventeen cases Miles looked at he made a notion of "no remarks." It seems strange that he did not comment on these given his other testimony on the insanity of that day. When you consider that General Miles was also awarded a Medal of Honor in 1892 for gallantry in the Civil War Battle of Chancellorsville, it would appear the price for his silence was his own medal, awarded almost thirty years after the action. A skeptic would view this as a way to silence his objections to the Medals for Wounded Knee.

Strangely, Miles did support many of the awards. More strangely, little if any, evidence exists of the review committee thinking, except that they decided to apply the standard of merit that was in place at the time the Medals were awarded. This left the Wounded Knee medals in tact. Miles never wrote about his thinking behind that decisions. This leaves us with more suspicions than answers, especially when you consider the rationale behind some of the medals that were issued.

While no formal investigation took place on the killing of Lakota as POW's public reaction to Cody's adventure was more complicated. Indian reformers objected strenuously to allowing Indians to perform their old dances in public. They wanted Indians to forget the old ways, become Christians and lead productive lives. In a strange twist, the reformers, who were strangely silent about the massacre at Wounded Knee, blew a gasket over the show Indians. They accused Cody of mistreating the Indians. Upon their return, Secretary of the Interior Noble ordered an investigation into the charges. Cody was given a clean bill of health.

In 1989, Buffalo Bill's grandson, William G. Cody and the senators from Wyoming successfully petitioned Congress to reinstate Cody and four other civilian army scouts and the Army Board of Correction of Military Records ruled that for all intents and purposes, Cody was a soldier. Ironically Cody himself had sold his medal and the Buffalo Bill Historical Society had to purchase it from a collector in 1983.

Lakota~WOUNDED KNEE: A Campaign to Rescind Medals