Question

What caused the Massacre at Wounded Knee?

Answer 1

There are quite a few immediate and long term causes of the massacre.

In the short term, troops went into the camp site to disarm the Native Americans; one deaf Native American misinterpreted the attempt to take his rifle and it resulted in a fight and a massacre.

Long term, it was perhaps the inevitable result of attempts to destroy the Native American way of life through settlement on reservations which made practicing traditional ways of life impossible and the poverty, both cultural and economic, which resulted from it.