Never give up your guns. December 1890. Spotted Elk, called Big Foot by the Army, was a Miniconjou Lakota chief, sick with pneumonia, leading about 350 of his people south through a South Dakota winter. They were not on the warpath. After Sitting Bull was killed during an arrest two weeks earlier, they were trying to reach Pine Ridge and the protection of Red Cloud. They flew a white flag when the 7th Cavalry intercepted them on December 28. They surrendered and were escorted to a camp at Wounded Knee Creek. That night more troops arrived. Five hundred soldiers surrounded them. Four Hotchkiss guns were set on the rises overlooking the tipis. The next morning, December 29, the Army ordered them to give up their rifles. A first collection produced only a few dozen mostly worn guns. Soldiers then began searching the camp and the men. During the search a shot went off, most accounts say in a struggle over a rifle held by a deaf man named Black Coyote who either did not hear the order or would not surrender a gun he had paid for. The soldiers opened fire into the crowded camp. The Hotchkiss guns fired exploding shells down into the tipis. Women and children ran for a ravine. Soldiers pursued them. Most of the Lakota men had already been disarmed. The shooting lasted less than an hour. Estimates of the dead run from 150 to more than 300. A large share were women and children. Twenty-five soldiers also died, many from their own side’s fire. Spotted Elk, too ill to stand, was shot where he lay. A blizzard followed. The dead froze where they fell. Days later photographers recorded the aftermath, including the famous image of Spotted Elk in the snow, head wrapped in a scarf. They had already surrendered. They were in the process of giving up their weapons. Then they were killed. That is the lesson written in the snow at Wounded Knee: once you hand over your guns, you no longer decide what happens next. Genuine photo of Spotted Elk: