A Visit to the Wounded Knee Memorial

Posted Sat, August 1, 2009 - 9:37 PM
travel, nativeamerica

On my way out to Wyoming and Colorado in 2007, I drove through South Dakota's badlands and Black Hills. I had decided to forego all the ugliness surrounding the freeway and Rapid City on this trip, and head south into the big prairie - the Pine Ridge reservation - intending to work my way over to the Black Hills from the south, thus avoiding the traffic, the billboards and the tourist traps. After a few hours of sleep in a rest stop, I went south from Kadoka on SD 73 in the predawn hours.

It was drizzling on and off as the sun came up and allowed me to barely see the surrounding land. It seemed to be less disturbed than the land I'd seen from the freeway, more shortgrass prarie and the sparse trees were natural pines and cedar. That's not to say that land in private ownership isn't undisturbed in many places, or the land on the reservation is all pristine, but I thought I could see a difference. Shortly after sunrise I had to stop for a group of three pronghorn antelope crossing the highway.

That morning I checked the map and decided to head for the historic site at Wounded Knee. I arrived around 7 AM after taking one of the bumpy, most washed-out gravel/dirt roads I'd ever seen. Thank the AWD. Nevertheless, the open land was quite beautiful, rising up and down in local relief that filled the lower half of my field of view. The upper half was dominated by the blue morning sky.

I knew I had arrived at the memorial when I pulled back onto a paved road and spotted a large sign posted in a pulloff. It was a little bit hard to read, because of the sky-blue background with white lettering. It turned out to be placed squarely on top of the site of the Sioux camp, and went into great detail about the massacre, pointing out various geographic features including the creek valley just to the north and the dry draw to the south where many of the band were indiscriminately shot as they fled. The memorial, interestingly, pointed out that the U.S. Army had just gone, for lack of a better word, ape-shit - they fired 2 inch mortar shells into the camp and ended up killing or wounding 36 of their own men, although the Lakota had the worst of it by far.

I also climbed up a small hill northwest of the monument, where there was a mass grave dug for the casualties. It was in the center of a small "traditional" (i.e., Western) cemetery, but there was a long filled trench in the center, surrounded by a low chain link fence.

Tied to the fence were hundreds upon hundreds of little strips of cloth, about 5-6 inches long, in bunches of four with the traditional colors of yellow, red, black, and white. In Lakota beliefs, these are the colors of the four directions - east, south, west and north, respectively - and well known from the image of the medicine wheel.

There were two souvenir stands next to the site, and one of them had a couple of people setting up. I did not feel like visiting them. Nor did I disturb the site by taking photos. I'd suggest that anyone who wants to know about what happened take the time to visit the site for themselves. There's something about the open skies, the golden grasses, and the persistent wind that makes it a much more real experience than just reading about it.

Two minutes of Googling reveal a couple other bloggers who've written touchingly about Wounded Knee (better than I could):

• Phil Konstantin (with photos of the sign and cemetery)
• Glennia Campbell