The Noble Savage in Our Modern Day World

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The Noble Savage in Our

Modern Day World

Elise de Kruijf, 10007423 Elise.dekruijf@student.uva.nl

History: American Studies MA Thesis

University of Amsterdam

Supervisor: dhr. prof. dr. R.V.A. Janssens 23 June 2014

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The Noble Savage in Our Modern Day World

Foreword

The wish to write a large project about Lakota Indians had always been present for me and now I finally had the chance to write a thesis on this topic. My interest in this particular tribe was generated when I went to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and experienced Lakota life from close proximity. The Lakota accepted me into their culture as though I was one of them and I have experienced, and sometimes participated in, several of the ceremonies that I will discuss in the following chapters. I therefore dedicate this research project to my Lakota friends and thank them for their help.

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Introduction

The Noble Savage in Our Modern Day World

While the Indians have gone through and are still part of a long process of assimilation into the American culture, the ‘assimilating Indian’ or ‘Americanized Indian’ is still a difficult ideal to accomplish in white America. Indians are perceived as outsiders in their own country and are rarely accepted in American society. Over the years, an interesting phenomenon has occurred dating basically from around the time of the Massacre at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. This phenomenon became more significant after the Massacre: an American fascination started to develop for the Plains Indian who is now often regarded as the ‘noble savage.’ This American fascination was also triggered by the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973, in which full blood Lakota traditionalists fought for cultural revival. The occupation opened the eyes of Americans and created a mood in favor of authentic cultures. The Indian I want to focus on is the ideal of the old-fashioned romantic Sioux Indian who lived in a tipi and hunted buffalo on the prairie and who existed before the Wounded Knee Massacre. The image of the ideal Sioux Indian was exemplified in Kevin Costner’s Dances

with Wolves1in the late twentieth century, in which they appeared in full traditional dress, spoke the real Lakota language, and lived on the prairie, hunting buffalo while on horseback. Focusing mainly on the Plains Indians, the Lakota Sioux, a dividing line can actually be set at the Wounded Knee Massacre, separating them into traditional versus assimilating Indians. I think it is important to learn about the pre-Wounded Knee and the post-Wounded Knee type of Sioux because the ideal Sioux is a late twentieth century construct. The main subject will be the late twentieth century American fascination for the noble savage which went hand in hand with cultural revival, with the pre-Wounded Knee Sioux Indian as the best example. The Massacre thus draws a line between old and new times for the Lakota. It is the most important event in Sioux history that forced a new lifestyle upon them, a lifestyle in which assimilation and Americanization was required. This leads to my main statement: the late twentieth century ‘ideal Lakota Indian’ is a white American construction that denies Lakota history and reality.

Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner’s attempt at filming Lakota frontier historyis a prime example of late twentieth century American fascination for Sioux Indians. It is interesting to note that Costner, in his attempt to film the process of Sioux history and whites

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turning Indian, is in fact himself a white guy dressing up as and playing a Lakota Indian. This is very significant and according to historian Philip Deloria there is a long history of

Americans doing the same as Kevin Costner, which, Deloria explained, occurred most significantly for the first time at the Boston Tea Party in 1773. A group of presumably white Americans had dressed up as Mohawk Indians to throw large amounts of tea overboard into the harbor. These rebels dressed up as Indians as to not reveal their true identity, but at the same time create a more effective rebellion as Indians were then seen as violent and fearful people. Over the centuries, this phenomenon of dressing up happened more often, but very early in its history dressing up as Indians usually had a sort of negative connotation to it. During the twentieth century, however, most of these negative connotations started to vanish and became increasingly positive, as Deloria stated:

At the turn of the twentieth century, the thoroughly modern children of angst-ridden upper- and middle-class parents wore feathers and slept in tipis and wigwams at camps with multisyllabic Indian names. Their equally nervous post-World War II descendants made Indian dress and powwow-going into a hobby, with formal newsletters and regular monthly meetings. Over the past thirty year, the counterculture, the New Age, the men’s movement, and a host of other Indian performance options have given meaning to Americans lost in a (post)modern freefall. In each of these historical moments, Americans have returned to the Indian, reinterpreting the intuitive dilemmas surrounding Indianness to meet the circumstances of their times.2

After explaining about the Mohawk disguises at the Boston Tea Party, Deloria goes on to give a detailed account of the developments of ‘playing Indian’ throughout the centuries. During the eighteenth century, most of these Indian reenactments were meant to accomplish

something or other by causing fear and commotion. However, Americans soon found out that without the Indians there would be no American identity, one was needed for the other to exist. In the nineteenth century, there was a slight shift in interest in the Indian after this realization of the need for Indians in order to create a distinct identity. The focus was put on the nostalgic past, brought to life by James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Redskins: Indian

and Injin. However, at the same time there were still negative connotations with Indians, and so the shift in interest developed during most of the twentieth century. Earlier, Indians were still associated with warfare and blood. Rebellions and revolutions evoked whites to dress up as Indians just as it had happened during the eighteenth century. Because of the associations whites had with Indians this still helped rebellious whites to accomplish certain goals. Deloria

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stated that the perception of Indians by the late eighteenth century was rather that they were enemies to Americans than that Americans were fascinated by them. This perception was difficult to change during the following century. Deloria wrote: “The Seven Years War had been a turning point in the racializing of native people and the development of a full-blown ideology of Indian-hating.”3 Wartime caused stories to roam around about Indian violence and gore, which forced the Indian in an increasingly separated position of the ‘savage Other’. After the War of 1812, these stories began to make place for a more positive view about the Indian as the Americans began to realize that what the Indian once symbolized was now vanishing into the past, and became farther removed from the American present.4 Playing Indian became a concept of positivity and fascination. Societies were created which

encouraged Americans to become ‘Red Men.’ Once the Indian began to fade away from the present, Deloria explained: “actual Indian removal led to a friendlier, more nostalgic image, such as that proffered by Cooper in The Redskins.”5 I will talk about this claim more later on, because this is also true for what also happened decades later when the Plains Indians were massacred.

Although Americans were more interested in the noble savages from before Frederick Jackson Turner’s moving frontier, the vanishing Indian who was called back to life barely represented the real Indian. For example, an interesting fact is that in real life, for male Indians, when a tribal member was to become a man, he had to join a war party and kill another Indian, or when the settlers came, a white soldier. This is mostly ignored by American representations. After his first kill the Lakota man would receive an eagle feather and a new name, which made him an adult. For example, the Oglala Sioux legend Crazy Horse was first named Curly when he was a boy and was later given his new name. In the romantic image of the white man’s noble savage, this detail about Indian life seems to have disappeared

altogether. Philip Deloria claimed that:

While actual Indian people struggled against removal and land loss and calico-hooded farmers plotted resistance, the imaginative urbanites of the Indian fraternities gathered in dark halls to don Indian dress and initiate palefaces into the historical mysteries of Indianness and patriotism. 6

3

Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 43. 4 Ibid., 58. 5 Ibid., 63. 6 Ibid., 69.

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In contrast with this, traditionalists such as Frank Fools Crow worked hard throughout the twentieth century to keep the image of the real Sioux Indian alive by secretly performing ceremonies that Americans banned. Fools Crow realized that his tribe was slowly Americanizing, but not in a positive way. Seeing this caused him to fall back on his old beliefs and in a traditional ‘vision quest’7 he asked ancestors for help.8 Historian Thomas Mails interpreted Fools Crow: “I pray the sweatlodge will remain with us because it is badly needed by our people. The same is true of the Sun Dance, the Kettle Dance, and Yuwipi. I have assumed that someone will take my place to assure that my ceremonies continue.”9 In Fools Crow’s view, Lakota culture was still to be saved, even though the tribe started to separate into two groups. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, the assimilating Indian increasingly gained ground, mainly due to intermarriage with Americans.

It is interesting to note that while the American Indian is doing his best to become Americanized, some Americans try to become Indians at the same time. However, not only Americans seem to have a particular interest in ‘playing Indian,’ in some European countries this also happens. However, Europeans are far removed from the contemporary American Indians and therefore are not as familiar with the Indians’ present lifestyle as much as Americans are. So in their minds, it may be that the picture of the pre-Wounded Knee Massacre Sioux Indians is still very lively, the romantic idea of buffalo hunting on horseback never fading from contemporary fantasy. Whereas Americans see the contemporary Lakota as they are in present day life and feel the need to restore the old time Sioux Indian. Americans may not like what they see now because they see it continuously while ‘overseas’ they still stick to fantasies about non-existent Winnetous and Hiawathas. Americans saw, as described by Deloria, a new type of modern Indian: “the new savagery of the modern. Coded as drinking, tramping, and laziness. Americanized Indians were powerful examples of the corrosive evil of modern society.”10 This may have caused Americans to feel a sort of nostalgia about the past and a repulsion of the present.Is the fantastic noble savage or vanishing Indian the reason why real Indians in the American contemporary world cannot exist and assimilate? The noble savage has become a stereotype in this world, and therefore, it could be argued that ‘real’ Indians are excluded from society because they do not fit in this image of being Indian anymore. Deloria explained this stereotyping in more detail in his work

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In a vision quest, a Lakota traditionalist would pray to Wakan Tanka (their God) to ask for help. He would not eat, drink, or move from his spot until he had received a solution to the problems his tribe faced.

8

Thomas Mails, Fools Crow, (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 148-9. 9

Ibid., 169. 10

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Indians in Unexpected Places, in which he described how Indians, because of the connotations and associations that others may have of the word ‘Indian,’ do not fit in

American society. Frankly, there will always be something off about the relationship between Indians and American life. At the Wounded Knee Massacre, around 300 Lakotas had been killed, indistinguishably, and the surviving ones quite possibly felt scared and unable to fight back. It could thus be argued that these Sioux Indians did not pose a threat to Americans anymore. This can justify why Americans started to love Sioux Indians decades after this horrific event. Sioux were not threatening American progress and expansion anymore. Historical events like this, in the long run, created an unexpectedness of Indians in an American world. They became rather artifacts to Americans than a people. Philip Deloria argued that by placing fences on the borders of the reservations, the Indians were already excluded from American life. Somehow the Americans created a metaphorical petting zoo after the Massacre by setting up these reservations. This way the Indians stayed in the ‘zoo,’ and could be looked at from a distance once the Americans felt like it. The paradox of this is obviously that Americans expected that the Indians would assimilate once put in the

reservations, but putting them somewhere outside of the truly American world would prevent this at the same time.

Americanization, which was actually what the Americans hoped to accomplish with Indians in America at the frontier and after the Wounded Knee Massacre, was hardly possible with genocide standing in-between these two cultures. Deloria claimed that the government was of the opinion that: “in theory, assimilation solved the ‘Indian problem,’ turning Indian people into Americans by ‘killing the Indian and saving the man,’”11 but the Wounded Knee Massacre would in any way have changed the outcome of assimilation for the Sioux. On the one hand, after the Massacre, there was not much choice for the Lakota but to do as the army told them and settle into the reservations. On the other hand, one would expect that Indians in general would always feel the need to take revenge for what was brought onto them by the Americans, so assimilation would then be out of the question. However, neither of the two options would bring any satisfaction, but it was certain that the ‘old days’ were over for the Sioux after the Massacre. Deloria argued:

Almost everything said about Wounded Knee, whether sympathetic or not, reflected a double edge. On the one hand, it was clear that, despite various policies aimed at assimilation, Indian – at least the Lakotas, and potentially

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everyone else – had retained and rebuilt a sense of their own uniqueness. They saw themselves as distinct, not simply in terms of culture, but also in the political sense necessary to the waging of war. Likewise, it was equally apparent that many white Americans saw them in similar terms. Indian outbreaks like Wounded Knee represented a conquest still incomplete. And, because it was incomplete, Indians could not truly be regarded as pacified… On the other hand, Wounded Knee simultaneously made it clear to everyone involved that Indians had been pacified.12

By putting the Indians in reservations, the government could control them and on the one hand make sure that the Indians would be Americanized to a certain extent. On the other hand, however, Americans would never let Indians assimilate to the extent that they would be able to live together with the Americans without realizing the differences in culture anymore. Stanley Lyman argued in Wounded Knee 1973, however, that during the Wounded Knee occupation tensions between Lakota Indians and Americans built up to such an extent that the Lakota aimed to break through the reservation fences and seize control again. The occupants felt that the Wounded Knee Massacre stood in the way of both assimilation and going back to their roots, so during the occupation, the thought of the Massacre played an immense role. In Lyman’s foreword to Wounded Knee 1973, historian Alvin Josephy claimed that “…Indians …saw in AIM a glimmer of hope for the restoration of a way of life long past. An AIM slogan of 1973 proclaimed, ‘The Red Giant is on one knee, but he is getting ready to stand up.’”13 For them, the Massacre had to be remembered by each and everyone in the United States. For the United States Government, however, the Massacre actually stood for what they had wished to accomplish: with it standing in-between the two cultures, perfect harmony would never be possible, and, at the same time, the Indian would always remain a sort of myth in this way. The romantic noble savage would thus be kept alive, which is what Americans like Kevin Costner aimed for, a certain revival of history in a romantic, nostalgic way.

This paper will regard four separate but related ideas. Firstly, the Lakota defeat at Wounded Knee after which the American Army dominated this Indian tribe. Secondly, after this event, Americans forced the Lakota into American assimilation by taking away cultural traits and habits which were seen as savage, mainly by putting Lakota in boarding schools. Thirdly, this cultural suppression resulted in an armed occupation by Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee which aimed for justice after the Wounded Knee Massacre and for the revival

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Philip Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places, (Kansas: University of Kansas, 2004), 34-5. 13

Stanley David Lyman, Wounded Knee 1973: A Personal Account, (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press: 1991), xvi.

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of Lakota culture. Fourthly, during the late twentieth century, Americans changed their perceptions about the Lakota and aimed to revive this culture as well, mainly expressed through modern day media, such as Kevin Costner’s film Dances with Wolves.

In the first chapter I will recapitulate the events at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 to some detail. This should lead to a better understanding of the Massacre itself, the years surrounding the Massacre, and the way Lakota and Americans dealt and still deal with it. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown will function as my guide, because at that time, Lakota Indians only used oral tradition to spread their history. Dee Brown investigated and retold the story of Wounded Knee from a historian’s perspective from the Lakota’s side. In addition to Brown’s historical overview there is one prominent primary work in this field which is the story of Black Elk. He was a full blood Lakota who was part of the Massacre itself and was old enough to fight in it too, which means that he was an eyewitness. However, it also means that he could not have seen and understood every detail about this Massacre at that time. This story was later recorded by American historian John Neihardt in Black Elk

Speaks. To investigate the Massacre, Black Elk is thus only reliable to a certain extent and in addition to that he may also be subjective and anti-American. Indians by then, in the

preliminary years to the Massacre, were used to continuously fleeing from the areas under attack by the American army. The army was after Indians most of the time, either to obtain land deals and treaties or to remove Indians from the areas of interest to them, such as the Black Hills for the Lakota, famous for its gold. This had been the same for centuries already, while the frontier kept moving westwards. For the Lakota, the first major clash between white Americans and themselves happened at the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Americans kept expanding their territory westwards and the Lakota basically obstructed the Americans’ way, which was cleared for Americans after the Massacre. The Massacre has had a large impact on both parties, but especially on the Lakota, and it can thus be seen as a dividing line between two different times.

In the second chapter I will describe the struggles that the Lakota faced after the Wounded Knee Massacre, using Stanley David Lyman’s book Wounded Knee 1973 as a framework. 14 In the first part of my investigation, on the effects of the Massacre I will focus on the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973. The Lakota Indians took a violent stance against white Americans, the United States Government, but also against their own form of

government, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Their aim was to restore traditional leadership and

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Stanley David Lyman, Wounded Knee 1973: A Personal Account, (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press: 1991).

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to get their own sovereignty and rights back. The governance was now in the hands of assimilating mixed blood Lakota people and Americans. Traditionalists felt that these people did not stand for what was best for the reservation and its people. During the twentieth century, Lakotas’ old traditions had been abolished by white Americans, because they were found threatening after the events of Wounded Knee 1890. In the winter of 1890, right before the Massacre, the Lakota performed a tradition named the Ghost Dance, which caused much commotion. To avoid this in the future, likewise traditions such as the Sun Dance were banned. Because of this limitation in cultural practices the Lakota had felt suppressed

throughout the century.To illustrate the differences in the situations of the late nineteenth and late twentieth century, I will look at literature from before the Wounded Knee Massacre that describes Lakota customs and behavior, so that there is some insight into what the Lakota Indians were like before the occurrence of this Massacre separated them from their beliefs and it will then be clearer what the Lakota hoped to go back to when they took part in the

occupation: the traditional beliefs and leadership by full blood spiritual leaders. Accounts of true Lakota Indians who lived in that time and experienced the lifestyle that is often referred to as savage are very important for this. Black Elk Speaks and also Fools Crow are two works that illustrate old traditions well. This way, it will be easier to understand the differences between the assimilating Indians from after the Wounded Knee Massacre and the

free-roaming prairie dwellers from before the Massacre, and the differences between the latter and the American romantic noble savage.

Eventually, after explaining the Lakota side of the story, I will focus on the American side of the story in the third chapter, asking the same questions as for the Lakota. It is

important to understand the difference between the contemporary Lakota Indian and the traditional Lakota who had known the time before the Massacre. I will investigate how much of the romantic noble savage that the American in the late twentieth century portrayed is actually a true image: was the pre-Wounded Knee Lakota Indian really how Kevin Costner depicted him in his film Dances with Wolves? There are a few details that tell the viewer that Costner’s film is about Sioux Indians. Costner talks about other tribes as “Sioux enemies”, of becoming a “Sioux warrior”, but the most significant small detail where Costner shows that ‘his’ tribe is Sioux, is when he says: “I had never really known who John Dunbar was. Perhaps because the name itself had no meaning. But as I heard my Sioux name [Sunkmanitu Tanka Owaci] being called over and over, I knew for the first time who I really was.”15 This

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Dances with Wolves, directed by Kevin Costner (1990; Amsterdam: A-film Home Entertainment, 2003), DVD.

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quote does not only indicate that ‘John Dunbar’ had felt a sort of meaninglessness before he had come to the plains frontier, but also that when this feeling suddenly changed by being given his new name, the romantic vision of Sioux life and living suddenly comes to surface in the film. Can we believe the illustrations that are being made in post-Wounded Knee literature and media, especially when most, if not all, of these pictures were produced by Americans? Costner’s contemporary illustration of the romantic noble savage has been captured in this film in 1990, precisely a century after the Wounded Knee Massacre had occurred.In his film, it is not just the case that a white man is introduced to the Sioux ways and after a while assimilates into Lakota culture, learns to speak the language fluently and eventually even becomes an Indian, but it also covers the story of a white woman who has been raised by Indians, after, which is quite striking, her entire family has been slaughtered by Indians. It seems that the fascination about Plains Indians in their original form has grown for the

American especially in the century after the Wounded Knee Massacre, and also seems to have increased while the Massacre is passing away by time. At the same time, however, the

Lakotas still struggle to cope with the memory of the Massacre and what it had done to their nation, which makes assimilation still difficult for them but also necessary to function in a white society. While for the American the tables are slowly turning and it seems that he increasingly rather sees the noble savage that the Lakota Indian once was.

The research on American interpretations of Lakotas such as Costner’s and Lakota reception of these white interpretations will be focused mainly on the last part of the twentieth century. This is an important period for Americans as well as Lakotas. I have already

mentioned the political movement by the Lakota, in which Lakota activists under the name of American Indian Movement, who had been fighting for their rights for a while, finally took to extremes and occupied the town of Wounded Knee in 1973. Was this a rebellion evoked by the memories of the Wounded Knee Massacre? Most of the occupants were bearing arms and showing violence towards Americans at that point, which could be seen as a demonstration that they had not given up and given into the Americanization but that they were still alive and fighting. This was thus a significant political movement and event from the Lakota side, basically again fighting against the white man’s influence. That it takes place at Wounded Knee brings back many memories for both parties, like ripping open an old wound. The Wounded Knee Massacre is by then still a sensitive topic for the Lakota. The period from 1973, when the Wounded Knee occupation happened, until the 1990s is a significant period. Like I mentioned above, the occupation was a political demonstration from the Lakota side, but from the American side, such as Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves, a cultural interest

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in the Native American was at its highpoint. In the late twentieth century, it can thus be argued that both parties aimed to revive the noble savage in a way, because the Lakota also wanted to keep their culture alive, rather than to Americanize. Many movies were made in these years, most of them dating from the 1990s, in which the Lakota Sioux was revived as the noble savage. To name a few: Son of the Morning Star, a film about General Custer and Crazy Horse; Lakota Moon, about tribal life before the white man had his influence; and slightly older ones such as A Man Called Horse, and its sequel The Return of a Man Called

Horse, about a white man’s captivity in an Indian tribe, dating from the 1970s. This period was a time of paradoxes, similarities, and struggles. The Sioux were trying to assimilate and Americanize, but at the same time trying to distinguish from Americans on a cultural level, which meant sticking to those cultural traits that made them exceptionally Indian, but also those traits that Americans hoped to level out and maybe slowly say goodbye to. A film that captures those struggles well is Thunderheart, produced in the 1990s as well, which captures the hurricane-like reservation life and the consequences of white man’s influence. The century after the Wounded Knee Massacre can be viewed as, for the Lakota, a century of the most intense struggles with the white man, because the white man’s concept ‘kill the Indian to save the man’ left an imprint on all generations following the Massacre. On the one hand, the Wounded Knee Massacre could be expected to still rule the lives of contemporary Lakota Sioux, but on the other hand, a century later, Americans might have expected that the Massacre would be covered in dust. This view and attitude may have caused the Lakota to tighten the grip on their roots even more, and as claimed earlier, they quite possibly felt a legitimate vengeful feeling after the Massacre and at the same time the need to distinguish themselves from Americans even more. However, it also generated a nostalgic feeling for Indians themselves, in which they longed for the way the once were. Just like Americans pictured this in the late twentieth century, an ideal image came into existence for both parties that aimed to recreate Dances with Wolves’ ‘noble’ Sioux.

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Chapter One

The Wounded Knee Massacre

Though most South Dakota agents did not express much concern over the Ghost Dance, Pine Ridge Agent Daniel Royer was much distressed by what he considered an excess of dancing, possibly warlike. That he—and, later, military and civil authorities—was able to see in Indian dancing imminent violence suggests the degree to which outbreak had come to structure with white perceptions in the wake of colonial containment.

Philip Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places16 For this thesis as a whole, it is important to recapitulate the historical event of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. I will describe the story in a short, but nevertheless detailed way and look at how the Lakota Sioux lived shortly before and after the Massacre. This chapter will deal with a major work that tells the story of a holy man of the Sioux Indians of that time, Black Elk, and his biographical work Black Elk Speaks, recorded by John Neihardt. It deals with the period before the Wounded Knee Massacre, approximately from 1860 to 1890, and with the Massacre itself in which Black Elk took part. He was old enough to be part of the war party and thus he describes the happenings from close proximity. Dee Brown’s Bury My

Heart at Wounded Knee is also a well known work in this field. It captures the story of the Massacre from the Lakota side. However, it is also important to consider the story from the United States Army’s side in order to have a better understanding of why they may have acted as they did. The Wounded Knee Massacre left a large wound for both parties involved. In this chapter I will explain why the Massacre had had such large impact and in later chapters I will deal with the ‘re-opening’ and ‘healing’ of this wound.

Earlier…

The Wounded Knee Massacre could be regarded as, for the Lakota, the major event in history that changed this tribe’s life forever. The Lakota tribe had already been in many battles before, not just against white soldiers but against other tribes as well, such as the Pawnee, Crow, and Cheyenne. These tribes all hunted and lived around the same areas and sometimes fought for territory or food supplies. These battles could therefore be said not to have such large impact. One of the reasons was the old Sioux tradition of becoming a man. In this

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tradition a boy had to attend his first battle. After his first kill he would receive a feather, a new name in a naming ceremony, and then he would legitimately have entered adulthood. Fighting and war thus was an important aspect to this tribe. Philip Deloria, a historian of Lakota descent, argued in Indians in Unexpected Places that violence had always played a large role in Indian tribes in general:

Another set of narratives…relied on the masculinist imagery of violent conflict. Murder, massacre, torture, captivity, revenge, squabble, raid, campaign, and, most particularly, ‘surround’ and ‘last stand’—such images and events underpinned white expressions of Indian difference…

Wounded Knee existed in a complicated relation to this idea.17

While the violence in Indian tribes did go hand in hand with manhood, it was also an act of protecting the fellow tribe members who could not stand up for themselves. A different reason for fighting was protecting the food supplies. For the Lakota, this was extremely important during summer, because they would hunt buffalo all summer long and dry the meat for winter. If other tribes took these supplies, it was difficult to survive. This emphasizes that violence was a necessity and that the people were used to it.

To start with what may have been a cause of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, it is necessary to go back in time to just some decades earlier. To most, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is also well known. It occurred in 1876, relatively ‘just’ before the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Little Bighorn Battle is, however, in contrast with the Massacre, a highlight in Lakota history. Firstly, because tribes from that area – particularly Crow, Cheyenne, and Sioux – who at first had not such a good relationship with each other, united. For the first time they tolerated each other enough to fight against their common enemy. This was already very unique, but clearly all these tribes felt threatened by the white soldiers and were willing to stand up against them. However, they also knew they would not have been able to accomplish any victories on their own. The victory against General George Custer’s army was immense; nearly his entire war party was slain. The army had invaded the Black Hills in 1874 which was the most important place for the Lakota. So, it was thought by the Lakota that the army had to be removed from that area. The big difference between this Battle and the Massacre is however that in the Little Bighorn Battle, both parties came to fight, but at Wounded Knee, the Lakota had already given up by famine, illness, and cold. In his chapter on “Violence,”

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Philip Deloria argued that what happened at Wounded Knee was not just to be blamed on the United States Army:

Troops were deployed throughout the area, and they intercepted the struggling Big Foot band as it came through the badlands and headed for Pine Ridge. On December 29, the troops of Custer’s old Seventh Cavalry— already muttering darkly about revenge—surrounded Big Foot and his people with Hotchkiss guns and proceeded to disarm them…As always …it was important to suggest that an Indian had fired the first shot, that the massacre was, in some twisted way, defensive.18

When there is war, there are always two parties involved and Deloria emphasized this. Since the Indian victory at the Battle at the Little Big Horn, the army had felt a strong need to take revenge. They had suffered defeat and at Wounded Knee they saw their chance to fight back. As Deloria also suggested, when the troops arrived at Wounded Knee, a Lakota actually fired first, which gave the army justification to perform what they had thought about.

In 1932, John Neihardt, an American historian and ethnographer, recorded Black Elk’s story of the Wounded Knee Massacre in the last few chapters of Black Elk Speaks. Neihardt claimed that he had chosen Black Elk because: “as a hunter, warrior, practicing holy man, and indubitable seer, [Black Elk] seemed even then to represent the consciousness of the Plains Indian more fully than any other I had ever known.”19 Black Elk first had visions of trouble that was yet to come and he then told Neihardt that, when the Lakota were told to stop performing their Ghost Dance, the feeling that his vision was to come true became stronger than ever:

In the Moon of the Black Cherries (August) many people were dancing at No Water’s Camp on [White] Clay Creek, and the agent came and told them to stop dancing. They would not stop, and they said they would fight for their religion if they had to do it. The agent went away and they kept on dancing.20

Looking at this passage now, one could argue that the Lakota had never stopped dancing. Even though at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, the dancing had forcibly stopped, shortly after, the traditional leaders started dancing again and others followed. It can also be argued, from this passage, that almost a century later, the Lakota stood up to fight for their

18

Philip Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 23-4. 19

John Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks, (New York: State University of New York Press, 1932), xviii. Preface to the 1932 Edition.

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religion. The dances were an important part of their religious beliefs and so, the fact that they never stopped dancing emphasized that they never stopped fighting for their religion either. I will expand on the fight for Sioux culture in chapter two. Interestingly, the Ghost Dance performed at Wounded Knee was actually Christian. The Ghost Dance came into being after the Indians had heard of the belief that Jesus was going to return to earth and they thought this could work for any spirit.21 This dance was supposed to bring back the Lakota ancestors to earth for guidance in this difficult time. However, it had the opposite effect on the United States Army. The Ghost Dance and most Lakota beliefs and traditions scared the army. The Dance instigated a chain reaction that set the entire army up against the Lakota, who were desperate instead of planning an attack on the whites. Dee Brown, an American novelist and historian, quoted one of the army’s agents in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: “At Pine Ridge the frightened agent telegraphed Washington: ‘Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy…We need protection and we need it now. The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done at once.’”22 After the Massacre, all these traditions that the army found suspicious were banned, such as the Sun Dance. This was an important and old tradition to ask ancestors for guidance. So, people like Frank Fools Crow, an important Lakota leader after the Massacre, went ‘underground’ to perform these ceremonies in secret throughout the twentieth century.

Dee Brown’s research work Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee captures the struggles between Native Americans and white settlers from approximately 1860 until the 1890s. This is the period in which the white man had had the most influence on the Lakota tribe. Brown explained which events that happened in the 1860s led to the outburst of the Massacre. Brown wrote that: “[Between] 1860 and 1890… it was an incredible era of violence, greed, audacity, sentimentality, undirected exuberance and an almost reverential attitude toward the ideal of personal freedom for those who already had it. During that time the culture and civilization of the American Indian was destroyed.”23 This quote sets a tone for what follows in Brown’s book. However, the Lakota had at first trusted to sign various treaties with the American army on a friendly basis. One of the most important treaties that caused a lot of controversy was the Treaty of 1868. This treaty can be seen as one of the most important causes of the following Battle at the Little Big Horn (1876) and eventually the Massacre. Brown quoted the main agreement of the 1868 treaty: “From this day forward all war between the parties to this

21

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, (New York: Bantam Books, 1972), 409. 22

Ibid., 409. 23

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agreement shall forever cease. The government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is hereby pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they now pledge their honor to maintain it.”24Brown later added that the treaty was specifically aimed to remove and keep white settlers from the Black Hills: “No white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the territory, or without the consent of the Indians to pass through the same.”25 It was signed by Lakota chief Red Cloud. However, what the Indians understood was in the treaty, was not really in the treaty, and this is what caused the controversies that I mentioned before. The Sioux understood that the parts of the land described in the treaty of 1868, mainly the Black Hills, were theirs and restricted to them only, but when Americans found out that the Black Hills held gold, they ignored the treaty completely, to the surprise of the Lakota. The treaty would only be in use if the land that the Indians were put on had no beneficial qualities to Americans.

December 1890

The tribe had been moving about the area of Pine Ridge for a while, not camping at the same place for long before they would pack up and find a new spot. After traveling away from the marching soldiers towards Grass Creek and White Clay, Black Elk and one of his fellows Good Thunder were warned about their coming arrest. Good Thunder had suggested to move camp from White Clay to Wounded Knee.26 Black Elk then spoke:

It was now near the end of the Moon of Popping Trees, and I was twenty-seven years old (December, 1890). We heard that Big Foot was coming down from the Badlands with nearly four hundred people.27 Some of these were from Sitting Bull’s band. They had run away when Sitting Bull was killed, and joined Big Foot on Good River. There were only about a hundred warriors in this band, and all the others were women and children and some old men. They were all starving and freezing…28

24

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, (New York: Bantam Books, 1972), 141. 25

Ibid., 261. 26

John Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks, (New York: State University of New York Press, 1932), 203. 27

John Neihardt explains this to more detail in a side note on page 205: Big Foot and his band of some three hundred Minneconjous fled from Cheyenne River Reservation on December 23, heading for Pine Ridge. They surrendered to Maj. Samuel M. Whiteside and a detachment of the Seventh Cavalry on December 28, and together the Lakotas and the soldiers camped for the night at the village of Wounded Knee, about eighteen miles east of Pine Ridge Agency. There they were joined by the regimental commander, Col. James W. Forsyth, and the remainder of the Seventh Cavalry who arrived from Pine Ridge Agency. Combined, the force numbered about five hundred men.

28

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The passage abovedescribes the Lakota side of what went on shortly before and led to the Massacre at Wounded Knee. The tribe was weak and even when joined by others, they could still not fight. This feeling of weakness is why the Ghost Dance was so important for them at that time. For the Lakota, American novelist Mari Sandoz argued in the novel These Were the

Sioux that the white man had had so much influence that the Lakotas future was already at stake long before the Massacre, but that the Massacre itself made a definite end to the dreams of freedom:

Whisky and avarice and starvation changed the minds of some of the chiefs, but their hope of this inalienable right to their earth never really died in the Sioux until the Ghost Dance failed…The hope, the dream vanished in the roar of the Hotchkiss guns at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, that winter morning in 1890.29

General Nelson A. Miles, who was in command of the Army stationed at the Wounded Knee area during the late nineteenth century, explained in contrast with what has been stated above that the tribe was commanded to camp at the Wounded Knee site and they did as they were told. He stated: “[The tribe was] intercepted by a command under Lt. Col. Whiteside, who demanded their surrender, which they complied with, and moved that afternoon some two or three miles and camped where they were directed to do, near the camp of the troops.”30 At night army Colonel Forsyth ordered for more reinforcements of the 7th Cavalry to surround the camp the next morning.

That morning, on December 29, 1890, chief Big Foot was deadly ill and because of this he had surrendered to the army. A pile of guns and knives was put by his tepee to emphasize that the Lakota did not want to fight.31 General Forsyth, who had surrounded the camp, brought his interpreter Philip F. Wells, a mixed blood Lakota, with him to negotiate with the people. However, even though most of the Lakota in the camp had surrendered their weapons, some had actually hidden them. Wells explained: “I saw five or six young warriors cast off their blankets and pull guns out from under them and brandish them in the air. One of

29

Mari Sandoz, These Were the Sioux, (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1961), 106. 30

Mintz & McNeil, “Documents Relating to the Wounded Knee Massacre,” Digital History, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1101

31

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the warriors shot into the soldiers, who were ordered to fire into the Indians.”32 The Indians’ violent outburst immediately triggered a reaction in defense from the army. Wells was also attacked by one of his fellow Lakota and Wells killed him in defense. This describes how a mixed blood Lakota already had problems connecting with either Americans or Lakota. These persons were not fully accepted on either side which defined in large part the struggle that followed after the Massacre, leading to the following chapter about the Wounded Knee occupation. Thomas H. Tibbles, a journalist from the Omaha World Herald reported: “Though the active attack lasted perhaps twenty minutes, the firing continued for an hour or two, whenever a soldier saw a sign of life. Indian women and children fled [everywhere], but the soldiers followed them and shot them down mercilessly.”33 Black Elk indicated that even though the Lakota may have triggered the sudden attack, “nobody knew what was happening, except that the soldiers were all shooting and the wagon-guns began going off right in among the people.”34 He emphasized that in the morning it had been a beautiful winter day; cold but sunny. After the massacre, however, an unexpected blizzard came.35 People who had been shot but not killed froze to death within minutes. One cavalryman reports: “slowly, for the sake of the wounded, the long column left the battlefield where the reds were lying as dark spots in the winter night and their sign of peace, the white flag, was moving gently with the wind.”36 Accordingly, on the Lakota side there were eventually between 250 to 300

casualties. On the army’s side there were 25 killed and 39 wounded.37

Analysis

The event raises a question: would it have mattered if there was more clarity about who had started the Wounded Knee Massacre? It was never entirely clear what had actually happened that day that set both parties off. The American soldiers claimed that the Indians in the Wounded Knee encampment showed the first signs of hostility by carrying weapons while they should not have. Like Philip Deloria stated, it was an Indian who fired the first shot. The Lakota, in contrast, claimed that the Americans came with orders to destroy all the Indians

32

Mintz & McNeil, “Documents Relating to the Wounded Knee Massacre,” Digital History, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1101.

33

34

John Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks, (New York: State University of New York Press, 1932), 211. 35

Ibid., 212. 36

37

“U.S. Army Massacres Sioux at Wounded Knee,” Old West, accessed April 18, 2014, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/us-army-massacres-sioux-at-wounded-knee.

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present. Lakota have also claimed that the Indian who fired first got caught up in a quarrel with a soldier who tried to disarm the Indian. However, this particular Indian was believed to be deaf and did not understand what was wanted from him, so in the quarrel his gun

accidentally fired. On the one hand, when considering the defeat of the army at the Little Big Horn, as argued by American writer Nancy Peterson, the Lakota could expect an act of revenge from the army: “The Indians were only too aware which cavalry they faced. Their triumph on the Greasy Grass had never really been avenged, and vengeance was an issue they understood to their bones. This could be a trap, younger men murmured.”38 With this in mind, it is likely that the army took their chance when it so unexpectedly came. If this was the case, then the Lakota had all the more reason to resist assimilation during the following century. However, when considering the awarded medals to the soldiers who were present at the Wounded Knee battle, it seems like the army is convinced that the Lakota had started fighting. It would then be logical to get awarded a medal for successfully protecting fellow soldiers and country. Although, it is also true that a victory will be celebrated in any case, so the medals may just stand for the fact that the army had overruled the Lakota, without any underlying meanings to it. The Lakota have never acknowledged that the first firing from their side was meant to defend themselves against the soldiers. For a long time the Lakota felt that if the army had taken responsibility for what happened that day, the period after the Massacre would have been entirely different for them. However, there was the contrasting feeling that Americans in the late nineteenth century were on their way to decrease the number of Indians in general in America. The Wounded Knee Massacre added immensely to this feeling. This made the decision to blame the act on white soldiers the most likely for Lakota and other people in favor of Indians.

Even though the Lakota had been pursued by the United States Army for

approximately a century, they are not disappearing. Lakota culture is still being kept alive regardless all the efforts to remove it or change it into the Christian way of life.39 Dee Brown argued that “[The American army] believed that what the Indians needed was less land and more Christianity.”40 This caused tensions to arise between the whites and Lakota, because it was thought by Christians that both religious beliefs could not exist at the same time. One had to go and that one was the Lakota belief. This can be regarded as the first signs of

38

Nancy Peterson, “Philip Wells: Wounded at Wounded Knee,” Wild West, published June 12, 2006, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.historynet.com/philip-wells-wounded-at-wounded-knee.htm.

39

Our Brother’s Keeper, edited by Edgar Cahn and David Hearne, (New York: New Community Press, 1970), foreword vii.

40

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Americanization during and after the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Ghost Dance could signify the very first visible sign that the Lakota were open to other (Christian) beliefs. After the Wounded Knee Massacre had happened, many Lakota did not know what was expected from them. However, they knew their culture had to stay, even though it almost died on the Wounded Knee battlefield. Traditionalists like Frank Fools Crow struggled to keep

performing the original ceremonies throughout the twentieth century. Thomas Mails, an American writer, captures Frank Fools Crow’s story in his book Fools Crow. Frank Fools Crow was a Lakota medicine man who was born around the time of the Massacre and lived in the entire century following it. He was a renowned member of the tribe because he had kept the ceremonies alive by performing them in secret. By doing this, the tribe would never forget who they were before the Massacre. The influence of traditionalists such as Frank Fools Crow led to the belief that Lakota culture was still to be saved, which in turn led to resistance against white Americans.

It is important to keep in mind that the American army did not surround the Lakota campsite for premeditated reasons to kill Lakota Indians at the Wounded Knee site. Many different events led to what happened there and as has been said before, where there is a clash, two parties are involved. Thomas Mails emphasized this in his book by including an article written by General Nelson A. Miles, from January 1891. The General spoke regretfully about all the clashes between the Sioux and the army during the late nineteenth century. Although he started his article with “the Indians are practically a doomed race,”41 what follows were his thoughts about putting himself in the Indians’ position. He switched his story to:

Suppose this vast continent had been overrun by sixty millions of [different] people…claiming that their civilization, customs, and beliefs were older and better than ours, compelling us to adopt their habits, language, and religion, obliging us to wear the same style of raiment, cut our hair…and we realized that such a conquest and the presence of such a horde of enemies had become a withering blight and a destroying scourge to our race: what then would be our feelings towards such a people? In considering this question we may be able to realize something of the feelings of the Indians of today.42

This passage leads to what follows in the next two chapters. General Miles captures both attitudes well in this short paragraph. In chapter two, the Lakota ‘feelings’ about Americans will be investigated, and as General Miles already claimed, these were not very positive.

41

Thomas E. Mails, Fools Crow, (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 29. 42

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However, chapter three will deal with the increasingly softening attitude of Americans towards Sioux Indians.

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Chapter Two

Assimilation or not? The Lakota Struggle at Wounded Knee II

“‘We no longer have a perimeter to defend—we have a border.’ - Wounded Knee occupant.” Bruce D’Arcus, “Contested Boundaries: Native Sovereignty and State Power at Wounded Knee, 1973”43 The Wounded Knee Massacre is well known for its devastating effect on the Lakota Sioux. Nearly a century after the Massacre had happened, a significant historical event took place for the Lakotas: the armed occupation of the town of Wounded Knee. It can be argued that the struggles that the Lakota faced after the Massacre had finally taken their toll and led to this violent outbreak against white Americans. Immediately after the Wounded Knee Massacre had taken place, the attitude of Americans towards Lakota Indians had changed in the sense that Americans forced the surviving Sioux to assimilate. After so many Sioux had been massacred, they did not form a threat to the American army anymore. The only solution that was authorized by the United States Congress at that time was to generate programs in which the Lakota would be transformed into ‘real Americans.’ For most of the twentieth century, boarding schools kept Lakotas away from their families. By putting the Lakota there, Americans made sure that the young Indians would get regular haircuts, receive American names, become fully Christianized, and learn American morals and manners. Most

importantly, no Lakota language was tolerated; learning English was inevitable and

inescapable. However, nearly halfway into the twentieth century, the American feeling about Indians in general changed somewhat, and the more tolerant attitude towards Indians gave way to Indian resistance against Americans once again. While the American interest in Indians was growing, the Lakota became increasingly resistant towards assimilation. At the same time, they also became increasingly interested in going back in time to take back what they had lost and so desperately needed: their culture. The resistance eventually, nearly a century after the biggest American-Lakota clash, led to another clash, turning into violence at the Wounded Knee occupation. This chapter will examine why Lakota Indians acted this way in the late twentieth century and how this reaction can be linked to the Wounded Knee Massacre.

43

Bruce D’Arcus, “Contested Boundaries: Native Sovereignty and State Power at Wounded Knee, 1973”, Political Geography 22 (2003), 425. This sentence was quoted from a Wounded Knee occupier.

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The History

The Lakota – and most Indian peoples in general within the United States – had been through centuries of struggles with white Americans. However, since the Wounded Knee Massacre these struggles had come to a point in which there was no turning back, but also, felt by the Lakota, in which there was hardly a way forward. Throughout the twentieth century Lakota had to forcibly adept to the white man’s ways. They were put in reservations in which there was no future but containment and deterioration. The relation between white Americans, their government, and the American Indians was not getting any better. In his essay “Contested Boundaries: Native Sovereignty and State Power at Wounded Knee, 1973,” Miami University professor Bruce D’Arcus gave an explanation of the cause of this and likewise political movements:

When such settled relations are upset—as in the case of a political movement, for example—conflict results over who will be most effectively able to

transcend those relationships, and who will be subsequently contained by them. …Only by transcending the immediate realm of settled social relations, and thus of particular crystallizations of power, can marginalized groups effectively change such situations.44

The Wounded Knee occupation started off as a small movement by mainly full blood Lakota people who were upset by the way they had been treated. They wanted to make a statement and it seemed to them that Wounded Knee would get the most attention because of its history, so they occupied this town. These Lakotas, known as American Indian Movement (AIM) members, aimed to fight against the tribal government and reinstate the traditions of a century ago. Stanley David Lyman, the Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973, argued that “the only way this faction can be satisfied is for the buffalo to return, for the white man to go away, and for the mixed bloods not to exist.”45

In his book Wounded Knee 1973, Stanley David Lyman explained what happened at Wounded Knee diary-wise, capturing each day in which important and significant events happened. Importantly, on the one hand, because of his position in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Lyman was present at council meetings and important decision-making moments. He knew what tribal president Dick Wilson was up to as well.On the other hand, because of his friendly relations with some full blood Lakotas, he also learned about what happened within

44

Bruce D’Arcus, “Contested Boundaries: Native Sovereignty and State Power at Wounded Knee, 1973”, Political Geography 22 (2003), 419.

45

Stanley David Lyman, Wounded Knee 1973: A Personal Account, (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press: 1991), 148.

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the boundaries of the occupied town.Lyman emphasizes in his personal account of the occupation that:

It is surprising that an incident such as Wounded Knee II, which created such a national and international stir, could have produced so few books, particularly when one considers the drama, the conflict, and the people in high places who were involved. Wounded Knee II was in part a struggle between the various divisions of federal government and other segments of the white community, but it was a struggle between divisions of American Indians.46

Furthermore, because of Lyman’s contact with both parties, his story captures not only facts, but also his own emotional involvement, and with that he attracts the reader’s emotional involvement as well. Lyman takes the reader on a metaphorical trip alongside the roadblocks at Wounded Knee, starting his story with a significant scene in which two little Lakota boys are playing in a peaceful environment. The sun shines and nothing seems to be wrong at that point. However, immediately after this scene the story takes an opposite turn and focuses on the violence among Lakota and the violence from Lakota aimed at the government. The two little boys could have signified how life at the reservation, or life for Lakota in general, could have been, but unfortunately was not meant to be. The twentieth century of “Lakota-killing” eventually led to an even larger gap between Americans and Sioux Indians. In the foreword to Lyman’s diary, Alvin Josephy Jr., an American historian, gave a short list of the reasons for Lakota resistance:

Their grievances were many and varied, ranging from grinding poverty, ill health, and substandard housing on reservations to the ignoring of treaty rights, the robbing of Indian-owned natural resources, lack of protection from

discrimination and prejudice, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) corruption and neglect, and the denial of self-determination and the right to govern themselves and manage and control their own affairs.47

This passage basically described the way Lakota lived in the period from the Wounded Knee Massacre until the Wounded Knee occupation. All these circumstances taken together led to a major clash, not just between Lakota and white Americans, but within their own culture as well: brother against brother. In the foreword to Lyman’s book, Alvin Josephy continued that this clash can thus be described as an “Indian ‘revolution,’” mainly directed against the tribal

46

47

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government. They were found responsible for not improving the situation on the reservation by that time, especially when Dick Wilson came in the picture as tribal chairman and employed many mixed blood Lakotas, who had different goals than the full bloods.

The official date of the beginning of the occupation was February 27th in 1973. The roads into Wounded Knee were blocked by American Indian Movement (AIM) members and guarded at all times. Lyman described that the takeover violated the law and so the United States Justice Department was immediately involved. They were in charge of negotiations and other developments regarding Wounded Knee.48 The entire occupation took 71 days, and during this time there were numerous negotiations between all parties involved, which were the AIM members, the BIA, and the U.S. Justice Department. The biggest clash was between AIM and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal president Dick Wilson. The Bureau was not sure how to handle the situation so they also blocked the roads to Wounded Knee, so that the occupants were locked in the town. The Justice Department and the Bureau both aimed to remove AIM members from the town, which was a reason for the occupants to start carrying guns. The situation became more and more serious, but eventually when the end came, on May 8th, only two people were known to have been killed. The occupants were removed from the area and taken to other towns. The ones who had violated the law were taken to jail. The town had turned completely quiet again and looked like an abandoned war zone. However, Lyman said: “even war zones can be rebuilt, and so will Wounded Knee. The green grass that I noticed with such satisfaction yesterday will be green for a few weeks longer, and then it will turn brown again, under the sun.”49 Implying that all will return to normalcy again.

Former AIM member and former Oglala Lakota tribal vice president Milo Yellow Hair also gave his view on the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973, saying that it was inevitable. The question was rather when it would happen than if it would happen. However, in the twentieth century the Lakota had a strong feeling of shame of their heritage because of the way in which their culture had been taken away from them. The Americans had taught them their culture was a shameful, barbaric aspect to hold on to and was to be forgotten. Throughout the twentieth century, Lakota would introduce themselves as Mexicans or Italians, to name some examples. While the tensions between Americans and Lakotas were rising, however, the feeling of cultural pride became increasingly stronger. Philip Deloria mentioned the changing perceptions of the Lakota in his book Playing Indian. These changed

48

49

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perceptions of Americans and their ways can be viewed as the underlying reason for the formation of AIM. AIM felt negatively about Americanization and wished to separate from it entirely. Deloria introduced the paragraph with a quote by the Lakota history scholar and writer William Powers:

‘Although the American Indian has resigned himself to wearing Whiteman clothing, working in Whiteman factories, and attending Whiteman schools, he has not forgotten the traditions of his forefathers. During the last twenty years, the Indian has become more interested in his own culture than ever before.’ Powers argued that Indians were assimilating, becoming equal participants in American society and economy, while at the same time renewing cultural differences built around a native past. The new narrative accompanied a reformulation of the authentic that was consistent with the cluster of ideas by then joined to culture.50

Yellow Hair claimed that “the Wounded Knee occupation can be seen as a ‘B.C. and A.D.’ type of happening, because of the extreme changes it brought forward.”51 The most important change for him was the change in attitude that Lakota had towards their own culture. During and after Wounded Knee II, the Lakota regained a pride of their culture and were actually very happy to tell someone ‘I am Lakota’, rather than shamefully fake being Mexican. The Lakota were increasingly aware of their third class position in society but never actually felt that there was enough reason to act against the United States Government. Just before Wounded Knee II, two Lakota were killed –Yellow Thunder and Bad Heart Bull – both kills premeditated by a white American, but when brought to court, both cases were judged as manslaughter. For the Lakota this was the final blow. This injustice triggered a fury against white Americans and their government that finally came to surface after decades of

frustration.52 The documentary “We Shall Remain” captured the story of the occupation and included commentary by involved Indians. John Trudell, Sioux author and former AIM chairman, explained that “there were a lot of Native people that were afraid to stand up…and for us, the baby boom generation, circumstances were right, we could raise our voice.”53

50

Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 140. William K. Powers is quoted in this paragraph, who was a scholar and author of many known books on Lakota life and beliefs. This quote appears in Powers, Here Is Your Hobby.

51

Milo Yellow Hair, interview by Elise de Kruijf, March 16, 2014, transcript. 52

Ibid. 53

Interview with John Trudell, Sioux. “We Shall Remain: Part V - Wounded Knee,” The American Experience, directed by Stanley Nelson, (New York City, NY: Firelight Media Inc, 2009), DVD.

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The Significance of Wounded Knee

The town of Wounded Knee was not chosen by accident; for the Lakota this town was still the most significant place on the reservation and still stored all the sore memories of Wounded Knee I. Bruce D’Arcus argued that because of what happened in 1890, the town Wounded Knee was “a particularly charged geographic symbol of violence... By claiming this famous historical site, the occupiers sought to raise awareness of American Indian issues. …[It] placed American state authority and national identity in radical question.”54 Also, former AIM member Marvin Goings, who participated in several protests by AIM, claimed that Wounded Knee was particularly chosen by AIM as the place for the demonstration to get the greatest publicity and acknowledgement. Publicity meant that the public would be reminded (and informed) of the wrongs that had been done at Wounded Knee in 1890. Goings noted that rows of trees were planted many years ago around the town of Wounded Knee in memory of those who died in 1890.55 The place thus still has a very special meaning to the Lakota. In “The Impact of the American Indian Movement on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation”, scholar Philip Roos explained that even though some action from the Lakotas was to be expected, “the timing, location and form of [Wounded Knee II] surprised everyone, including most, perhaps all, participants. The massive federal military reaction was also unexpected.”56 The Lakota had been in a passive position for a long time, but now they reacted in an extreme way.

The American government sent the FBI to Wounded Knee to forcefully end the armed occupation, but the Lakota aimed to revive old broken treaties and thus violence against violence was not the option in this case. Living in harmony again would only be possible after granting rights that were once promised but never given. The occupation became renowned for its remarkable symbolic politics and the way in which the articulation of Indian rights took place.57 Dr Philip Roos also links Wounded Knee II to Wounded Knee I regarding politics:

At the same time, and despite its political rhetoric, AIM enhanced the social and religious prestige of the older nationalists as well. This seems a faint echo of [Wounded Knee I]. [William] Powers58 claims that leadership of the tiyoshpayes [translated as ‘extended family,’ these were usually small districts] shifted from the

54

B. D’Arcus, “Contested Boundaries: Native Sovereignty and State Power at Wounded Knee, 1973”, Political Geography 22 (2003), 416.

55

Marvin Goings, interview by Elise de Kruijf, March 15, 2014, transcript. 56

Philip Roos, “The Impact of the American Indian Movement on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation,” Phylon 41, no. 1 (1980), 91.

57

B. D’Arcus, “Contested Boundaries: Native Sovereignty and State Power at Wounded Knee, 1973”, Political Geography 22 (2003), 417.

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The Noble Savage in Our Modern Day World