Two separate but related historical events are relevant to an understanding of the image of this patch. The earlier historical event took place in December 1890 when U.S. Cavalry troops massacred some 300 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek, on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. The massacre at Wounded Knee was one of the worst atrocities committed against Native Americans in the history of the troubled relations between the tribes and the federal government. The later historical event took place in 1973, when some 200 Oglala Lakota, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), occupied the town of Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 massacre.