Also for you "ambush" obsession, actually the 7th Cav soon faced an actual ambush, and what happened is they would all have been killed if they didnt get rescued by a competent unit, because they were just a bunch of retarded murderers:

On Tuesday morning, December 30, the first accounts of what happened at Wounded Knee appeared in daily newspapers nationwide. That same morning Lakota warriors who were angered by the slaughter set fire to a small log schoolhouse near the Drexel Mission, located about 4 miles below the Pine Ridge Agency. Responding to the blaze, Colonel Forsyth led his regiment into a narrow canyon where his 400 soldiers were pinned down all day by a band of no more than 50 warriors. Six soldiers were wounded and one killed before Forsyth's troops were rescued by a squadron from the Pine Ridge Agency under the command of Maj. Guy V. Henry.

The 7th under Custer was defeated by thousands, that's perfectly understable even as it was really barely a fight (not much of a "last stand" really). Now these complete retards here, what the fuck was even that?

And remember they still remain the most MoH decorated outfit in the American history.

The loading and aiming took place before it. It was a part of the escalating tensions.

There was no "plan". It was an accident and then it was just carnage after they were fired on.

They weren't any "attackers", they were defenders. Defending not just some place or idea but their families from murderers and after having been mostly disarmed.

What this dying officer said he thought was a signal (so he says he ordered to "fire at them") was really the medicine man doing his routine symbolic gesture. When he mentioned how some raised their weapons above their heads "like in an offering" he didn't know what they were saying, and it was really one guy who did so and he started shouting how it's his rifle that he paid a good price and he's not going to just give it like that. (I don't remember was it mentioned in this particular book.) He just didn't understand this, too.

Your so invested into defending your stupid misconception, is it actually not even your original idea?

And here's also an official National Park narrative:

Big Foot's people camped to the south of the soldiers along the north edge of a dry ravine. Little movement occurred in the Indian camp that evening, although Dewey Beard, a young man at the time and one of the Lakota survivors, later said, "There was a great uneasiness among the Indians all night [for fear] that they were to be killed."

December 29, 1890

On the morning of December 29 Colonel Forsyth called a council. He ordered the Lakotas to surrender all of their guns and told them they would be taken to another camp. This immediately started a rumor among the Indians that they were to be taken to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma - a fate worse than prison to the Minneconjous. The Lakotas grudgingly surrendered a few old weapons, but because Forsyth believed the Indians were hiding their best rifles, he ordered a search of the warriors and the camp.

While a few soldiers rummaged through the Indians' tents for weapons, an Indian from the council circle began singing Ghost Dance songs and "stooping down, took some dirt and rose up facing the west ... cast the dirt with a circular motion of his hand toward the soldiers." Lt. John C. Gresham later said that when he saw this action, he and the rest of the soldiers interpreted it to be a signal to attack the troops. But Dewey Beard later explained that the man threw the dirt "as they did in the ghost dance when they call for the Messiah."