A native of Aberdeen, South Dakota, my roots are deep in the state. Both sets of grandparents settled here before the turn of the century, and my family has been active in political and community activities. Granpa Aldrich was mayor of Aberdeen for four terms, and I grew up with senators and governors as family friends. My mother always reminded the current governor that she taught him how to swim when he was a little boy. I've recently come home to reside with my elderly father following the death of my mother.

I became interested in Wounded Knee while researching the book series I'm editing on South Dakota pioneer women entitled Daughters of Dakota. The biggest surprise for me has been the frequency of stories indicating a cooperative and friendly relationship between Indians and settlers, generating the obvious research question, "what went wrong?" The answer ultimately led me to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.

What I'd like to share with you is some of that research journey. A solid grounding in my discipline of women's history has given me a healthy skepticism of current historians, so in my work I limit myself to first-hand accounts of people who were present at the event, and/or had access to the most knowledge of it. Hence, I went to the words of the commanding generals, soldiers in the fields, Indian agents, government officials, teachers, those who cared for the wounded, etc. I decided initially to limit myself to the accounts of non-indians, and concentrate on the testimony of the men in charge, to see how they described the events at Wounded Knee. There are only a few key white women included; the only Indian voice you'll find in this testimony is quoted by Governor Sigurd Anderson.

Let us begin with the final story in the second volume of my book series, Daughters of Dakota, which is essentially where I began:

A frightening lynch mob mentality prevailed, with one North Dakota paper declaring: "The most wholesome way to put the quietus on the Messiah racket is to hang old Sitting Bull, and the other disturbance plotters, for conspiracy..."

It was clearly not just the papers back East that created an atmosphere that made genocide thinkable, but it was the local small-town papers, as well. In my home town of Aberdeen, which is in the opposite corner of the state from the Pine Ridge reservation, there was a kind and mild-mannered newspaper editor named L. Frank Baum who starred in an opera with my grandmother during the state fair in 1890. Mr. Baum wrote,

General Miles :

"The trouble has been gathering for years. Congress has been in session now for several weeks, and could in a single hour confirm the treaty and appropriate the funds for its fulfillment; and, unless the officers of the army can give positive assurance that the Government intends to act in good faith with these people, the loyal element will be diminished, and the hostile element increased."

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs took the same stand in a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, dated December 26:

"I desire to ask your attention briefly to the situation as viewed from the Indian standpoint."

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs :

"Prior to the agreement of 1876, buffalo and deer were the main support of the Sioux. Food, tents and bedding were the direct outcome of hunting. And with furs and pelts as articles of barter or exchange, it was easy for the Sioux to procure whatever constituted for them the necessities, the comforts, or even the luxuries of life. Within eight years from the agreement of 1876 the buffalo had gone, and the Sioux had left to them alkali land and Government rations."

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs :

"It is hard to over-state the magnitude of the calamity, as they viewed it, which happened to these people by the sudden disappearance of the buffalo, and the large diminution in the number of deer and other wild animals. It was as if a blight had fallen upon our grain fields, orchards and gardens, and a plague upon all our sheep and cattle.. Their loss was so overwhelming, and the change of life which it necessitated so great, that the wonder is that they endured it as well as they did. For not only did the vast herds of buffalo, and exhaustless supply of deer and other animals, furnish them with food, clothing, shelter, furniture and articles of commerce , but the pursuit of these animals and the preparation of their products furnished to the great body of them continuous employment and exciting diversion. Suddenly, almost without warning, all this was changed, and they were all expected to settle down to the pursuits of agriculture in a land largely unfitted for use. The freedom of the chase was to be exchanged for the idleness of the camp. The boundless range was to be abandoned for the circumscribed reservation; and abundance of plenty to be supplanted by limited and decreasing Government subsistence and supplies. Under these circumstances it is not in human nature not to be discontented and restless, even turbulent and violent."

Dr. V. T. McGillycuddy, former Indian Agent In Charge of Pine Ridge wrote,

"It must also be remembered that in all of the treaties made by the Government with the Indians a large portion of them have not agreed to, or signed the same. Noticeably was this so in the agreement secured by us with them the summer before last, by which we secured one-half of the remainder of the Sioux reserve, amounting to about 16,000 square miles. The agreement barely carried with the Sioux nations as a whole, but did not carry at Pine Ridge or Rosebud, where the strong majority were against it; and it must be noted that wherever there was the strongest opposition manifested to the recent treaty, there, during the present trouble, has been found the elements opposed to the Government."

McGillycuddy :

"The staple articles of food at Pine Ridge and some of the other agencies had been cut down below the subsisting point, noticeably the beef at Pine Ridge, which from an annual treaty allowance of 6,250,000 lbs., gross was cut down to 400,000 lbs. The contract on that beef was violated in-so-much as that contract called for Northern ranch beef, for which was substituted through beef from Texas, with an unparalleled resultant shrinkage in winter, so that the Indians did not actually receive half ration of this food in winter, the very time the largest allowance of food is required."

McGillycuddy :

"By the fortunes of political war, weak agents were placed in charge of some of the agencies at the very time that trouble was known to be brewing."

McGillycuddy :

"Noticeably was this so at Pine Ridge, where a notoriously weak and unfit man was placed in charge. His flight, abandonment of his agency and his call for troops have, with the horrible results of the same, become facts in history."

McGillycuddy :

"Now as for facts in connection with Pine Ridge, which agency has unfortunately become the theater of the present "war:" was there necessity for troops? My past experience with those Indians does not so indicate."

McGillycuddy :

"Why was this? Because in those times we believed in placing confidence in the Indians; in establishing, as far as possible, a home rule government on the reservation. We established local courts presided over by the Indians with Indian juries; in fact we believed in having the Indians assist in working out their salvation."

McGillycuddy :

"When my Democratic successor took charge in 1886, he deemed it necessary to make changes in the system at Pine Ridge...The Democratic agent was succeeded in October last by the recently removed Republican agent, [Royer was removed after Wounded Knee] a gentleman totally ignorant of Indians and their peculiarities; a gentleman with not a qualification in his make-up calculated to fit him for the position of agent at one of the largest and most difficult agencies in the service to manage: a man selected solely as a reward for political services. He might have possibly been an average success as an Indian Agent at a small, well regulated agency."

McGillycuddy :

"As for the "Ghost Dance" too much attention has been paid to it. It was only the symptom [sic] or surface indication of a deep rooted, long existing difficulty; as well treat the eruption of small pox as the disease and ignore the constitutional disease."

McGillycuddy :

"As regards disarming the Sioux, however desirable it may appear, I consider it neither advisable, nor practicable. I fear it will result as the theoretical enforcement of prohibition in Kansas, Iowa and Dakota; you will succeed in disarming and keeping disarmed the friendly Indians because you can, and you will not succeed with the mob element because you cannot."

McGillycuddy :

"It should be clearly understood that at that time, in 1890, the Indian thought more of his rifle and his knife as implements of the chase than as weapons of war. But with the shortening of the beef ration the ability to take game became of even greater importance and he did not want to give up his rifle..."

Governor Sigurd Anderson :

"Paul Highback who was there and who was very badly wounded says: 'So then of us went up to them and we had only one gun to lay down. This soldiers did not like this very well, but we could not put our guns down because we did not have them with us. Those of us who had guns had left them back at our tents.' The Indians [sic] men, women and children were surrounded by soldiers. Paul Highback goes on to say: 'But as it turned out, there were two men down at the lower end of our group who had their guns under their blankets. One of the soldiers who was walking back and forth in front of us saw the ends of those guns sticking out. He called out to the other soldiers that these men had guns. I could see it all and I can say that neither of those men raised their guns or shot them but as the soldiers started forward to take the guns suddenly all the rest of the soldiers raised their guns and fired right into us.' It was as if a rocket had been set off. The Hotchkiss quick-firing guns fired into the mass of Indians [sic] men, women, children and soldiers."

Governor Sigurd Anderson :

"There was nothing planned about the affair. It was the net result of an understandable misunderstanding by everybody and the violation of a sound order by the white commander. What followed was too horrible to be recounted...There has never been a greater tragedy in American History."

United States Senator from South Dakota Karl Mundt :

"...what followed can hardly be classified as the white man's proudest hour...Big Foot and his band of 340 braves, women, and children surrendered unconditionally to Major Whitside at Porcupine Butte, and on December 28th, 1890, the Indians were escorted to Wounded Knee where Colonel Forsythe assumed command. On December 29th, the decision was made to disarm the Indians before moving them into Pine Ridge. It should be remembered that to the Indian his rifle was his plow and combine; his means of livelihood, and a cherished possession indeed. It was no small wonder, then, that the Indians did not readily comply with this request, requiring the soldiers to search the teepees for firearms. It is not clear what actually was meant by the medicine man who threw a handful of dust in the air. The result was, of course, the carnage which followed, and at the end of but a few minutes, 50 soldiers and 200 Indians - men, women, and children - were lying dead among the burning tepees. The bodies of women and children were found scattered for a distance of two miles from the scene of the encounter where they had been cut down by the calvalry..."

Senator Karl Mundt :

"The horror of the encounter is even more magnified when it is remembered that the wounded and dead of the Army were immediately evacuated to Pine Ridge while it was not until two days later, on January 1, 1891, that an effort was made to gather up the dead and wounded of Big Foot's band. During those two days, a blizzard had raged through the area. It was found that some of the women and children were still alive in spite of being exposed to the severe temperatures, frostbite coupled with their wounds ultimately caused most of them to perish."

General Colby wrote that

"Colonel Forsythe came out from the Agency to the camp on Wounded Knee, with orders from General Brooke to disarm Big Foot's band; and on the morning of December 29th, he assumed command of the two battalions of 500 men and a battery of Hotchkiss guns."

General Colby

"These remnants of the followers of Sitting Bull had relied upon the words of Captain Whiteside [Whitside] in yielding to the military authority, but they were naturally suspicious and uneasy. They had witnessed the tragic fate of their old chief and medicine man. Many of them believed that they were to be put to death, and naturally supposed that their disarming was simply to render them defenseless; others believed they were to be disarmed, then imprisoned and held for years in Florida, North Carolina, or Alabama as their brothers, the warlike Apaches, had been treated years before. The whole proceedings of this morning intensified their feelings, and confirmed them in their belief in regard to the terrible fate which awaited them."

General Colby :

"The surviving Indians now started to escape to the bluffs and the canyons. The Hotchkiss guns were turned upon them, and the battle became really a hunt on the part of the soldiers, the purpose being total extermination. All order and tactics were abandoned, the object being solely to kill Indians, regardless of age or sex. The battle was ended only when not a live Indian was in sight."

A soldier at Pine Ridge who

"did not witness the battle although I was not very far from it - so close in fact during the entire engagement as to be able to hear the Hotchkiss guns and a part of the time could hear the small arms"

wrote this account to a friend:

Soldier 1 :

"...Well finally the gallant 7th boys pulled themselves together, straightened out, got out of one another's way, out of the way of the battery. There was a cry of 'Remember Custer' and at it they went. Men, women and children fell like hickory nuts after heavy frost. Men, women and children were piled up on that little flat in one confused mass. Blood ran like water...Big Foot's band was converted into good Indians."

Twenty year old Hugh McGinnis was in the First Battalion of the Seventh calvalry at Wounded Knee, and was wounded twice. His account reads, in part,:

Soldier McGinnis :

"Through the interpreter, Colonel Forsyth got down to the business at hand. But the Indians were very far from pleased when he requested them to surrender their arms. They argued that they needed their old fowling pieces to kill game in order o survive. This plea failed to move Colonel Forsyth, however, and he insisted that the Sioux go back to their tents and return with their weapons...Forsyth then detailed a number of soldiers to search the tents and confiscate the Indians arsenal. He picked five members of my troop to accompany Captain Varnum and several other chaps from troop B."

Soldier McGinnis :

"The Sioux braves became agitated by the cries of their squaws, who attempted to prevent the soldiers from scattering their belongings..."

Soldier McGinnis :

"...fantastic as it sounds, the surrounding troopers were firing wildly into this seething mass of humanity, subjecting us as well as the Indians to a deadly crossfire while the first volley from the Hotchkiss guns mowed down scores of women and children who had been watching the proceedings."

Soldier McGinnis :

Few escaped the merciless slaughter dealt out that dreadful day by members of the Seventh calvalry. There was no discrimination of age or sex. Children as well as women with babes in their arms were brought down as far as two miles from the Wounded Knee Crossing.

There's an interesting commonality about the preceding testimony regarding what happened at Wounded Knee. The authors are all in agreement that Wounded Knee was a massacre. The other thing they have in common is that they are all white men: the two commanding generals in the field, a South Dakota governor, a United States Senator from South Dakota, the former Indian agent at Pine Ridge and two soldiers.

The action of the Commanding Officer, in my judgment at the time, and I so reported, was most reprehensible. The disposition of his troops was such that in firing upon the warriors they fired directly towards their own lines and also in the camp of the women and children, and I have regarded the whole affair as most unjustifiable and worthy of the severest condemnation.