Plenty Horses

On January 7, 1891, nine days after the Wounded Knee Massacre, he shot and killed Army Lieutenant Edward W. Casey,[1] commandant of the Cheyenne Scouts (designated Troop L, Eighth Cavalry) two miles north of the Stronghold Table in the Badlands of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

His defense was he shot and killed Casey as an effort to redeem himself in the eyes of his people after having spent five years at the Carlisle Indian School learning the ways of the white man.

[2]The trial of Plenty Horses, which took place at Fort Meade near Sturgis, figured prominently in the investigation of the events surrounding the Wounded Knee Massacre, specifically as to whether Spotted Elk's band were considered to be prisoners of war.

An unexpected witness for the defense at the trial of Plenty Horses was Captain Frank D. Baldwin, a member of Miles’s staff, who was already in the state, having gone to Pierre to urge the governor to ban the sale of weapons to Indians, which the legislature had failed to do.

[3] As a result of the finding that a state of war did exist, Plenty Horses escaped conviction for murder and was released, thereby helping to exonerate the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry, the perpetrators of the Wounded Knee Massacre, none of whom was ever charged.