Tasunke-Ota

Tasunke-Ota. . On January 5, 1891, Frist Lieutenant Edward W. Casey attempted to reconnoiter a Ghost Dance camp near Pine Ridge Indian Agency in western South Dakota. When Casey was directed to leave, Tasunke-Ota (Plenty Horses), a camp guard, shot and killed him., This event occurred one week after the Wounded Knee massacre where 250 Lakota men, women, and children, prisoners of war, were shot and killed by soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry. Although General Nelson Miles ordered the arrest of Plenty Horses as a prisoner of war, he was later turned over to the civilian courts for prosecution., Two jury trials were held by the United States District Court in the nearby Masonic Temple Annex. The defense argued that a state of war existed between the United States and the Lakota and that the killing of Casey was not murder, but an act of war., When the first jury deadlocked, a new trial was ordered. In the second trial the federal court directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty, and Plenty Horses was freed.