About this Book

On December 29, 1890, two weeks after the killing of Sitting Bull, the United States Seventh Cavalry opened fire on Mini-conjou Ghost dancers near Wounded Kneed Creek. Some army officials claimed that the dancers were armed and that the Ghost Dance was a call for the extermination of all whites. Many Lakotas believed that the massacre stemmed from the Seventh Cavalry's enduring bitterness over Custer's loss at the Little Big Horn fourteen years earlier.

In Voices of Wounded Knee, William S. E. Coleman brings together for the first time all of the available sources -- Lakota, military, and civilian. 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. His balanced treatment suggests that the massacre grew out of decades of broken treaties, cultural misunderstandings power struggles between the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Army, and erroneous and inflammatory reports by irresponsible members of the press.