For the first 40 years after the massacre, it was generally thought of as a straight-up battle in which the Sioux were defeated. As early as November, newspapers were reporting a gathering of Sioux at the Pine Ridge Agency and saying the Sioux were ready to fight. The Sioux there were called wild cultists and "fanatics including some of the most desperate and treacherous redskins in this part of the country ..."

On the day after the massacre, the New York Times entitled its front-page story "A Fight with the Hostiles: Big Foot's Treachery Precipitates a Battle." After the new year, the Pine Ridge, S.D. newspaper declared, "It is evident from the testimony of officers and men that the Seventh barely escaped the tragic fate of Custer in the battle of White Clay Creek."

This belief (in that the soldiers survived only through courage and skill) wasn't universal around the world. "If variety were always spice, nothing could be more spicy than the ignorance displayed in the comments of English papers upon American affairs. It is most noteworthy just now in connection with the recent Indian troubles. The only incident in these that seems to have attracted attention is the fight at Wounded Knee, which is almost uniformly treated as a bloodthirsty and wanton massacre. ... Americans know that the killing at Wounded Knee was unavoidable and that the military operations against the Indians have been conducted with wonderful skill for the prevention of bloodshed." (New York Times, Jan. 22, 1891)

The first reference in the New York Times to Wounded Knee as a massacre appears in a letter to the editor from 1902, in which a Henry C. Carter compares it to contemporary massacres being committed by American soldiers in the Philippines. By the 1930s, the belief in Wounded Knee as a massacre was widespread enough to generate a reaction against calling it a massacre: "It is a trifle tiresome to read continually of the 'Massacre of Wounded Knee' and of 'drunken troopers' firing into tents. Many of the Seventh Cavalry are still living and these epithets are unwarranted, especially in view of the records in the War Department concerning the affair. — John J. Davis, Hanover, N.H.)