As the squaws began to break camp and pack up to move, Forsyth lined up the 120 men and orderd them to turn in their weapons. When only few token guns, mostly broken, were surrendered, he searched the lodges and found arms and ammunition hidden in them. Next, he ordered a body search of the Sioux, men and women, for weapons concealed under their blankets. The Sioux were angered by this humiliating procedure, of corse ... A single soldier and a warrior got into a scuffle. Someone, probably this enlisted man, fired a shot, perhaps accidentally ... Forsyth troops opened fire on the crowded camp at close range. The soldiers were excited, scared, perhaps vengeful, remembering Little Bighorn. Their small arms fire was deadly at such close quarters, but it paled before the bloody work of the Hotchkiss guns.
To the Indians and many sympathic whites, the Battle of Wounded Knee was not a battle at all, but a massacre. That it was, but only in part. It was not a massacre in the sense of the deliberate slaughter of Sand Creek in 1864. For it was also a battle or, at least, a real skirmish. Forsyth lost 25 officers and men killed, and had 39 wounded. Big Foot and his medicine man, Yellow Bird, were among the 150 Sioux dead on the frozen ground. There were another 50 Indians wounded. Probably the large number of women and children, 62, among the Sioux casualties was the result of wild firing by riflemen and Hotchkiss gunners at close quarters. In fact, some of the Army's own dead and wounded were the accidental result of gunshot and shrapnel wounds from friendly fire.
The public was horrified by Wounded Knee and compared it to Sand Creek. Miles saw it as a stupendous blunder by Forsyth. He relieved him of his command and summoned a court of inquiry. ...

But Miles had erred, too, in ordering Forsyth to disarm the Sioux and entrain them to Omaha. As Sumner said, Big Foot could have been escorted peacefully, to Pine Ridge had the Colonel not tried to seize all Indian weapons.(9)