Wounded Knee, 125 years later

Wounded Knee, 125 years later



?resize=620%2C415
John Two-Hawks, left, Yamni White Eagle and Darwin Yellow Earrings stand at the Wounded Knee Memorial on Tuesday as part of a commemoration of the 125th anniversary of the massacre.



Longtime publisher Tim Giago raising funds to buy Wounded Knee property for tribes
When the foundation he created raises $3 million — and Tim Giago has no doubt that will happen — he wants to see the Wounded Knee land he buys… Read more




Flakes of ceremonial tobacco fluttered from outstretched hands Tuesday morning as a frigid wind whispered over Wounded Knee, an echo of that day 125 years ago. Dec. 29, 1890: The day the U.S. Army 7th Cavalry massacred between 150 and 300 Lakota Sioux and buried them in a mass grave on a desolate hill. “They brought all the bodies back here and crushed them down into this pit we are standing on,” said Chubbs Thunder Hawk. “Imagine.”

About 75 onlookers joined Thunder Hawk at the gravesite while another 40 or so on horseback moved down the road to Pine Ridge, their last stop after nearly a whole week of retracing Chief Big Foot's route to Wounded Knee as part of the Chief Big Foot Band Memorial Ride.

For someone like Nathan Blind Man, imagining the horror of that day is not difficult. His grandfather Hopa Hoksila was one of the few Native Americans to survive Wounded Knee. Blind Man remembers his grandfather as a reserved man who rarely, if ever laughed, burdened with the trauma he endured as a 10-year-old boy in the winter of 1890.

In Blind Man’s telling, Hopa Hoksila and his little brother, Eaopi Tikala, managed to flee the massacre with their mother, Blue Whirlwind, who survived 14 bullet wounds fired from U.S. Army rifles. Her husband, Blind Man’s great-grandfather, didn’t make it out alive.

. . . . .

http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/wounded-knee-years-later/article_0feff2cf-fbb4-5abc-9576-34e930853cb6.html