Voices of Wounded Knee

by William S.E. Coleman

In Voices of Wounded Knee , William S. E. Coleman brings together for the first time all the available sources-Lakota, military, and civilian-on the massacre of 29 December 1890. He recreates the Ghost Dance in detail and shows how it related to the events leading up to the massacre. Using accounts of participants and observers, Coleman reconstructs the massacre moment by moment. He places contradictory accounts in direct juxtaposition, allowing the reader to decide who was telling the truth.

Genres: History, Indigenous

446 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2000

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made me appreciate more than any other the hard work of writing about history: evaluating sources, shaping a narrative, formulating a theory. Not because Mr. Coleman did it so well, but because he didn't do it at all . . he reprints firsthand accounts of the events surrounding the infamous 1890 massacre of the Sioux by US forces, annotated with his italicized comments. So this book is 400 pages of footnotes. Have you ever tried to read 400 pages of footnotes? Difficult and not incredibly informative.

[Rachel Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to be brutally honest about this book: it fucked me up. I've read a fairly decent number of books in my lifetime, many that have impacted me in a myriad of ways, but none of them had the same gamut of emotions as I felt when I was reading Voices of Wounded Knee. It was brutal. Of course I knew more or less what to expect when I began the book, wanting as much detail as possible about the horrors of December 29, 1890 and the events that led up to the massacre of hundreds of Lakota people. But the difference in this case is that William S.E. Coleman's book consisted of only first-person accounts from both the Lakota people who were present in all of the events that fateful fall, and from army officials who provided their own careless, callous accounts. There was very little philosophizing or speculating about what happened; it was only actual testimony from people who lived it. And knowing these were real people going through real trauma was what impacted me the most.

I often say that books having to do with Native American history in the United States should be required reading, owing to the fact that few people know much about the treatment inflicted upon the indigenous population by their own government. But those are often standard history books—high-quality, for sure, but often written by 20th or 21st century viewpoints with hindsight on their sides. Voices of Wounded Knee is an entirely different type of book. You read about what is happening to the Lakota people as they tell it in their own words, as they put a more human voice to the distant events in history that you only read about with a modern lens (or sometimes don't read about at all, since our country's history is often swept under the rug).

The sense of foreboding I felt this entire book was staggering, but I felt such an intense sense of fear and dread right before the morning of the massacre. Coleman's chronology of primary sources was assembled so adeptly that the pacing of the book made me curious at first, then angry, and then, finally, fearful to the extreme. I knew—again, speaking from a 21st century perspective—that I was about to read some very heavy, traumatizing content, but nothing could have prepared me for the straight-forward account of murder and massacre that this book included. And still nothing could prepare me even more for the callous, murderous accounts that the army officials provided, offering excuses and lies about what happened so that they wouldn't get into any trouble for it. Excuse my language, but fuck that. Expletives such as that were rampant in my reading of this book, hearing what lies and manipulation were spewed out by government officials trying to make themselves look better—and find any excuse to slaughter the Lakota by any means necessary.

In that sense, Voices of Wounded Knee was excellent solely because it pissed me off. The correspondence and documents that Coleman tapped into for this book were astounding, and it gave me even more information about the winter of 1890, more than I ever thought I could know. So yes, this book should absolutely be more required reading. It further strengthened my sympathy toward the Lakota and my hatred for the U.S. Army and the U.S. government. I hope that anyone who reads this book gets their eyes opened to perhaps a different truth from what they are used to hearing. It is so important to know this history.

[David Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's a collection of primary documents, official records and collected testimonies, of the time leading up to and including the U.S. Army's massacre of Lakotas at Wounded Knee, S.Dakota. Eloquent and wretched both, this book is about the horrifying road sometimes chosen on the jorney to American "Exceptionalism."