Some Wounds Never Heal

On December 29, 1890, 500 troops of the U.S. 7th Cavalry, supported by four Hotchkiss guns killed more than 250 unarmed Lakota Indians, including women, children and infants, at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. More died of exposure, following the slaughter.

Either a state of war existed between the Lakotas and the United States at that time, or it didn’t. If a state of war did exist, then US soldiers murdered unarmed prisoners of war. If it did not exist, then US soldiers murdered innocent civilians.
Either way, it’s a crime.

For this “heroic” action, members of the 7th received 20 Medals of Honor, more medals than given for any other military action in US history…

The Wounded Knee massacre wasn’t a unique, isolated tragedy, any more than the massacre of innocents at My Lai was a unique, isolated tragedy.
Both were a matter of policy.
There were a thousand Wounded Knee’s; there were a thousand My Lai’s.
The adage about being doomed to repeat history if you fail to study it applies here.
From South Dakota to Vietnam to Iraq, the names and faces change but the story is the same, as we export “manifest destiny,” by other names, around the globe.

When I was a child, too ignorant to be anything but innocent, I mistook the American Mythology that I was taught in school and saw in the movies, for real American history. When I finally learned the truth, it was like getting hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. Not a pleasant thing to discover that everything you believe and believe in is a lie.
No words can express the anguish and outrage and shame I felt.
I suppose I feel it still.



This year American Indian horsemen and horsewomen, will make a ride 300 miles, from the site of Sitting Bull’s grave to the site of the Wounded Knee massacre, taking over two weeks to make the trek. It’s the 23rd year the ride has been made.
In part, it’s a ride to honor those who died on that winter day long ago. In part it’s a journey of renewal – of culture and connections, principles and dreams. The young people call it the ride “for the Future.”

If I could ride with them, I would.


sj