Native American (American Indian) GoodReads Members discussion

Here's my review of Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, which was originally published in the Native Sun News out of Rapid City, SD.

For most Lakotas, the Wounded Massacre was just that — the ruthless slaughter of the mostly unarmed followers of Chief Big Foot on Dec. 29, 1890.
For some historians, it was either an accident — and a few even believe — a real battle where two armed sides were pitted against each other.
It is destined to be one of those tragedies that will be debated endlessly.
There have been many good blow-by-blow accounts of the events leading to the horrific incident — Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Rex Allen Smith’s Moon of Popping Trees, and George E. Hyde’s A Sioux Chronicle — are a few that come to mind.
None of them have put the incident in the larger context of national politics quite as thoroughly as University of Massachusetts at Amherst Professor of History Heather Cox Richardson does in her new book, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre.
The book covers territory readers of this newspaper are undoubtedly familiar with: the Dawes Act and its intent to remove Lakotas from land coveted by settlers; the subsequent reductions in rations that brought about starvation and disease; and the spread of the Ghost Dance religion, which was supposed to bring salvation to a society that was clearly experiencing collective trauma.
It has never been answered to my satisfaction as to who fired the first shot on that balmy winter the morning. Was it a jumpy member of the 7th cavalry? Or a Lakota warrior angered over the confiscation of his rifle?
But I’ve never believed that it mattered. The Army should not have been on the reservation in the first place. The bigger question then is why U.S. troops came to the South Dakota reservations to quell the seemingly harmless religious rituals that were part of the Ghost Dance religion? Hysteria in neighboring white communities over the perceived dangers of the dancing was certainly one factor.
So who is at fault?
In short, the Republicans, Richardson asserts.
The pro-business GOP’s appointment of Daniel F. Royer as agent, and President Benjamin Harrison’s desire to placate the voters in the newly created state of South Dakota contributed to the disaster, is one of the book’s primary themes.
To put this in the larger context, Richardson gives the reader a lesson in the party politics of the 19th Century. A very, very long lesson, and one that some readers will tire of as they try to move on to the events immediately leading up to the massacre.
To be sure, Agent Royer was the wrong man at the wrong time. A political appointee who was there to take advantage of the numerous opportunities to scam the system and line his pocket, Royer was the primary alarmist who brought the troops unnecessarily to the reservations.
Like many Democratic and Republican appointees before him, Royer had little experience dealing with Native Americans, and believed that as agent, the residents of Pine Ridge would obey his every command. When they ceased to stop performing the Ghost Dance, he sent panicky telegrams to Washington asking for troops.
The Army, under Gen. Nelson Miles, was not eager to come in and clean up the mess created by the civilians. For the military, it was another chapter in the long-standing turf war between the Army and elected officials and their political appointees over who would control reservations. The Army thought it could do a better job of lording over Native Americans.
It was also an organization in search of a mission and relevance, as Richardson points out. This was prior to American interventionist policies overseas, and the so-called “Indian Wars” were coming to an end. It was a “Frontier Army” but the frontier was disappearing. The Navy was on the ascent and the Army’s status in U.S. society in decline. Enlightening context such as this is one of valuable parts of this book.
Richardson does a good job of explaining Miles’ thinking in this regard. I personally have a hard time believing that the men once charged with tracking down, killing and subjugating Indians were the best ones for the job of administering reservations.
Indeed, one of the first orders Brig. Gen. John Brooke gave upon arriving on Pine Ridge was to lock up 100 Lakota students in a dormitory and hold them hostage in order to break the will of their parents. If the monumental disaster that is Wounded Knee isn’t enough to show how badly the Army of 1890 could fail, then this is one more small example of its officers’ autocratic ways.
I don’t need to go into detail here on the results of the political pressure and the white hysteria. It ended in a catastrophe that still reverberates on Pine Ridge today.
Aside from the aforementioned Republican history lesson that detracts from the pacing of the book, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, is well worth reading. It is also, I’m happy to report, readable. Sadly, this is not often the case with history books produced by academics. Many potentially good history books have been ruined by professors with zero flare for the written word and poor storytelling skills. That’s not the case here. Richardson’s work should satisfy academia and the general reading public who want to know more about this tragic slice of American history.
A press release that accompanied my review copy stated that the book will be the “definitive account of an epochal American Tragedy.” I doubt this will truly be the last word. Like many other infamous historical incidents, the events of Dec. 29, 1890 will be debated for years to come.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns, which devotes a chapter to the Wounded Knee Massacre. It will be released in paperback this fall.

Yes, I agree it's a topic that will be continue to be debated by some, but personally knowing Tatanka Yellowbird, direct descendant of the medicine man Yellowbird who was one of many killed at Wounded Knee...it is not a debatable topic at all. The conclusion is clear, and to me as well, but I continue to find various books on the topic of interest anyway.

Stew wrote: "Here's my review of Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, which was originally published in the Native Sun News out of Rapid City, SD.

For most Lakotas, the Wounded ..."

I am grateful for your informative and thorough review.

Let's look at the facts: They took away the weapons of most of the people who had weapons and then heard a shot being fired, which was probably not from one of the warriors because they would
a) know that shooting at the soldiers would most likely end in not only thier death, but the death of much of their tribe
b) not have much ammunition to spare in the first place.

Then the soldiers commenced firing on the mostly unarmed Natives. This sounds a lot like a Massacre to me.

Here is what the government calls a Massacre:
Their soldiers march into a large encampment of Natives and attacked them. The warriors fought back and killed them all. Custer was mostly to blame for that, but the U.S blamed Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. But of course, because niether of them were handily waiting to be punished, they punished the Sioux on the reservations, who had done nothing wrong.
This does not sound like a massacre to me.

Good review! The book sounds interesting, but perhaps more so for students of American politics than American Indian history.

Yeah, I'm more for history than politics myself, though.