by Richard Seifried
Signal Hill Musings
July, 2005
Thirty-eight years before I was born, a group of Americans was seeking religious assistance. What they desired was what all United States citizens feel they must have, the freedom, the right to practice their chosen religion. But at this moment in time, they would not receive the help they were seeking.
Just thirteen years before, in 1877, one of their great political leaders had been assassinated. The following turbulent decade culminated with the murder of another great leader in 1890.
An imperfect — though close — analogy would be the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and how those great losses affected our people.
The exact date of the incident was December 29, 1890, just fourteen days after their charismatic leader had been shot to death.
Confused, frightened, denied their religious freedom, the little group decided to move to an area where the federal government would protect them. There were approximately 350 persons, 120+ men, 230+ women and children.
To compound their anxiety, their remaining leader had pneumonia and was hemorrhaging badly. The weather was frightfully cold. Strong sub-zero winds made traveling painful, almost unbearable. They camped for the night in a small valley through which a stream flowed.
In the morning, on December 29, 1890, these Americans awoke to find that they were surrounded by five hundred United States Army regulars. Four Hotchkiss guns (lightweight, rapid-fire machine guns that could fire explosive shells at the rate of almost a shell per second) had been placed on a nearby western hill, aimed at the refugee camp.
A shot rang out and the 500 soldiers opened fire on the mostly unarmed people. Within five minutes, the majority of the shooting ceased, though sporadic killing continued. Survivors claimed that some women fled through the snow for three miles before they were overtaken and killed.
Recorded casualties indicate that the religious group suffered 153 members killed, 50 wounded, and 150 recorded as missing. The army lost twenty-five men and thirty-nine were wounded. Since the victims had but half a dozen or so weapons, circumstances strongly indicate that most of the soldiers were cut down in crossfire from their own comrades.
Witnesses reported that some cavalrymen cut the genitals from the bodies of the dead. At least one stretched a woman’s privates across the pommel of his saddle as a souvenir. Other soldiers, displaying the genitals of men, boasted that they were going to make pouches out of them.
The captured wounded were disproportionate according to sex. Only four were men and the rest, forty-seven, were women and children. They were placed in open wagons and hauled the long way back to the closest fort and settlement. When they arrived, the military discovered that all of the barracks were filled. The wounded were left in the open wagons to continue suffering from the bitter cold.
Finally, an Episcopal mission removed its own benches, scattered hay on the rough flooring, and the injured were brought in out of the deadly wind.
Survivors reported that as they were carried through the mission’s entryway, they observed a tattered banner that read PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN
*
This account, of course, is now referred to as the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the victims were a Native American tribe, the Miniconjou Lakota. Their only crime? They had performed the forbidden Ghost Dance, a harmless, non-violent religious ceremony that implored their gods to drive the White Man away and hasten the return of the buffalo. Defeated, lied to time and again, facing starvation, they felt that the Ghost Dance was the only hope they had.
Crazy Horse, their great leader, had been bayoneted to death just a few weeks before. Big Foot, their surviving leader, was unfortunately dying of pneumonia (and was ultimately shot to death in the slaughter). The military unit was a regiment of the 7th Cavalry, Custer’s old outfit – glorious, heroic Custer, the killer of innocents, who was himself killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.
(provided by nativenewsonline.net)
The campground, the site of the massacre, was Chankwe Opi Wakpala, known also as Wounded Knee Creek.
One account listed the dead at eighty-four men and boys, forty-four women, and eighteen children. Seven of the wounded died in a Pine Ridge hospital. Most, perhaps as many as those 150 who were never found, must have perished out on the windswept grasslands and their bodies never found.
Twenty Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who took part in the slaughter. To this day, despite continued protests, the medals have not been revoked.
On July 24, 2006, my son-in-law Tom Shafer and I left Badlands National Park and headed for our last specific destination before heading home, Wounded Knee.
We headed south across the National Grasslands. Strange how a person can inaccurately visualize an area they have never visited. I had always assumed that the land south of the National Park was hostile, consisting of alkali depressions, prickly pear cactus, hard-packed earth, simply a wasteland. It is all of that, but my idea was basically incorrect.
When we drove across the area, heading south, we encountered green, rolling, gentle hills with lines of trees filling the many drainages. Occasionally, the bleached skeleton of a dead cottonwood towered above the grasses. It was absolutely beautiful. A land that, if I had been raised there, I would have loved.
Our journey took us on to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Again, my preconceived assumptions were wrong. The reservation was beautiful, empty except for an occasional habitation. Most homes were of the Katrina FEMA-type house trailers, dirty white, sitting on concrete blocks. Cars, many old and non-functioning, littered the yards. These modern dwellings were, to me, a modern version of the tipi, placed down in sheltered hollows or resting upon natural terraces.
There were horses but very few cattle.
Seldom did we pass a moving vehicle, perhaps twenty or so miles between encounters. Neither did we see signs of the infamous problems of alcoholism and drugs that are reported to be such a problem on the reservation. Only once, just outside of the reservation, at Whiteclay, we saw three Indian women on a street corner, their appearances reflecting some indiscernible sort of social misbehavior.
Just north of the tiny community of Wounded Knee, we came down Rt. 27 to the site of the massacre.
Dramatically, nothing was there.
Well, almost nothing. The road junctioned with a dirt road coming in from the east. Dusty lanes formed a sort of triangular island. An old, hard-to-read green sign indicated that we were at the massacre site, its paint peeling and weatherworn. Even I, a historian, rapidly grew impatient while trying to read the message and abruptly walked away halfway through the information.
Tom said, “Maybe it’s up there.” He pointed to the west, atop a small knoll, toward a cemetery.
I mumbled quietly, “I don’t think so.”
Tom, driving, worked our Toyota 4-Runner up a badly rutted, dirt lane and parked at the entrance to the Wounded Knee Cemetery. Two or three deteriorating concrete steps led to an area where, behind a four-foot chain link fence, stood a very old, weathered, concrete monument. All along the narrow, cement-covered center of the enclosure were the names of Lakota men who were buried there.
Beyond, further west, the cemetery expanded. Many more recent tombstones stood about in irregular lines. Plastic bouquets and wreaths reflected the reverence, the loneliness, the loss of loved ones. The cemetery’s fence was a shamble of broken wires. New white crosses stood amid the drabness, perhaps reflecting the influence of the Catholic church that stood in the valley below. Hills of grasslands rolled on and on to the horizon.
That, I knew, was not the massacre site.
A fortyish couple, their dress reflecting the near poverty of the area, arrived. The gentleman told me that the hill that we were standing on was where the Hotchkiss guns had been placed. Down there, where the valley floor flattened, just before the stream, was the campsite. Lakotans and Americans died where the sign was, where the crude shelters stood that locals sat under when they sold souvenirs.
That was the place. I wanted to go there, to the dense foliage that bordered Chankwe Opi Wakpala, Wounded Knee Creek.
Tom drove me there. We crossed a bridge, drove a short distance, and used a farmhouse lane to turn around. Once more, at the stream, I had him stop the car and we got out.
It was ugly there. A grader had smoothed the road. A long, thick line of mud ran along both sides. Small trees, bushes, and underbrush choked the stream’s banks.
I don’t know what Tom felt. We didn’t talk about it. John Two-Hawks’ wife, Peggy (both Lakotans), told me that the last time she was there she couldn’t get out of the car.
Contrary to what my color slides of the day show – a brown flowing stream with sunlight beyond – I experienced darkness on a sunny day. Perhaps the brightness distorted my vision. What I saw was a black, rushing, unfriendly stream. Vegetation choked the banks. Shadows were deep, unrelenting. A place that had seen such horror still reflected the agony of that not-so-long ago, fateful day, an event that occurred just thirty-eight years before my birth.
This, I realized, was where women screamed. Sabers cut deep into necks and backs. Babies fell from dead mothers’ arms and lay crying until a horse’s hoof or a rifle dispatched them too. Crimson blood splashed the snow and froze within seconds. Icy wind carried the cries of the dying along the valley and upward to the hill summits.
I could have stayed there for hours. Not out of obligation. Not because of guilt. Rather, it was a desire to stay in the sacred place where so many people’s spirits had fled their bodies.
Instead, I placed a cigar, sacred tobacco, and a cluster of crow feathers that I had brought with me. I placed the items in the thick mud, as far beyond the road as I could reach, they being simple tokens of my sorrow. I only wish I could have done more.
