115 Years ago - today.....

[Waya]

Wounded Knee Massacre


"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . . the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

~Black Elk~

[cleofus1]

1. kinda hard

to put a happy face on that one...

my advice...be fruitful and multiply...walk the path...and teach your children who they are...

[existentialist]

2. Yes

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, the federally recognized Tribe that includes the band of Lakota lead by Big Foot (Si Tanka) recognizes the the as the Day of Mourning. There is now an annual ride from Sitting Bull's campsite to Wounded Knee, that has got to be closer to three hundred miles than it is to two hundred, on horse back over (I think about) two weeks in the South Dakota winter to commemorate it. Some years the temperatures have been below -20 F. and they have done it anyway.

Black Elk's sadness is still keenly felt. (My second wife was a direct descendant of Wounded Knee survivors; her anger and sadness remains strong. She helped with the ride every year for I don't know how long.)