U.S. soldiers massacred hundreds of Lakota men women children at Wounded Knee

By Debra Adams Simmons, Executive Editor, History & Culture

More than a century after U.S. soldiers massacred hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, a movement is underway demanding that medals granted to the soldiers who participated be rescinded.

In December 1890, 500 U.S. soldiers killed at least 300 Lakota people to try to silence Native Americans whose lives were being upended by white settlement. Twenty of the soldiers would receive the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military’s highest and most prestigious commendation.

President Joe Biden is being pushed by members of Congress to revoke the medals awarded to the soldiers who participated in the massacre, among many historical atrocities of which the U.S. is being forced to reckon. In January 2021, the South Dakota state Senate passed a bill that called on the U.S. Congress to open an official inquiry into the medals. Many expect Biden to rescind the medals, a position he has supported in the past. BUT 

What tools did Europeans bring America?

The Europeans brought technologies, ideas, plants, and animals that were new to America and would transform peoples' lives: guns, iron tools, and weapons; Christianity and Roman law; sugarcane and wheat; horses and cattle. They also carried diseases against which the Indian peoples had no defenses.

AND 

European nations came to the Americas to increase their wealth and broaden their influence over world affairs. Many of the people who settled in the New World came to escape religious persecution. The Pilgrims, founders of Plymouth, Massachusetts, arrived in 1620.