After the Wounded Knee Massacre, the US Seventh Cavalry quickly counted dozens of slain Lakota warriors and left the bodies on the ground. Snow soon engulfed the silent landscape, precluding burial before the New Year. Although the cavalry’s official reports only counted male Lakota casualties, civilians who visited Wounded Knee in the wake of the snowstorm described a horrific scene of men, women, and children shot down as they fled. When an internment team arrived, they were accompanied by photographers who captured images of the killing field and the corpses filling the mass grave. Visually ... More

After the Wounded Knee Massacre, the US Seventh Cavalry quickly counted dozens of slain Lakota warriors and left the bodies on the ground. Snow soon engulfed the silent landscape, precluding burial before the New Year. Although the cavalry’s official reports only counted male Lakota casualties, civilians who visited Wounded Knee in the wake of the snowstorm described a horrific scene of men, women, and children shot down as they fled. When an internment team arrived, they were accompanied by photographers who captured images of the killing field and the corpses filling the mass grave. Visually, Wounded Knee became one of the most documented massacres in history. This book analyzes the memory politics of the post-Civil War Indian Wars, with particular emphasis on the event that purportedly ended those contests—the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, in which the US Seventh Cavalry killed more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children, ostensibly for their adherence to the Ghost Dance religion. The book argues that Wounded Knee did not end the Indian Wars; it simply transferred the venue of conflict from the killing field to the field of memory. In the aftermath of Wounded Knee, the dominant society incorporated it into national memory. Meanwhile, the Lakota survivors (takini) attempted to rebuild their shattered lives and demanded justice from the American nation state for their human and property losses. Survivors’ efforts continued to shape Wounded Knee memory continued even after their deaths, in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.