Frederick E. Toy

Commanded his cavalry troops in armed clash at Wounded Knee.

Frederick Ernest Toy enlisted in the United States Army in Chicago in 1883. He served in the 7th Cavalry and became first sergeant of Company G. His service placed him in the Army's campaigns against Native American peoples on the northern plains.

On 29 December 1890 the regiment surrounded a Lakota camp at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota and attempted to disarm its inhabitants. Gunfire developed into a massacre in which large numbers of Lakota people, including women and children, were killed. Toy received the Medal of Honor for conduct during that day's fighting. The award belongs to the history of the massacre and has long been contested by Lakota descendants and others; its existence does not resolve those objections.

Toy subsequently became an ordnance sergeant and served at several Army posts. His career also extended into the period of the Spanish-American War and the occupation of Cuba. He retired from the Regular Army in 1910. During the First World War he returned to service with a captain's commission. His later civilian life was associated with western New York. He died at Youngstown, New York, on 5 August 1933. His Medal of Honor remains listed by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society; the Pentagon's 2025 decision retained the Wounded Knee awards.