From Wounded Knee To The Gallows

On December 28, 1894, the day before the fourth anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, Lakota chief Two Sticks was hanged in Deadwood, South Dakota. The headline in the Black Hills Daily Times the next day read “A GOOD INDIAN”—a spiteful turn on the infamous saying “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” On the gallows, Two Sticks, known among his people as Can Nopa Uhah, declared, “My heart knows I am not guilty and I am happy.” Indeed, years later, convincing evidence emerged supporting his claim. The story of Two Sticks, as recounted in compelling detail in this book, is at once the righting of a historical wrong and a record of the injustices visited upon the Lakota in the wake of Wounded Knee. The Indian unrest of 1890 did not end with the massacre, as the government willfully neglected, mismanaged, and exploited the Oglala in a relentless, if unofficial, policy of racial genocide that continues to haunt the Black Hills today. In From Wounded Knee to the Gallows, Philip S. Hall and Mary Solon Lewis mine government records, newspaper accounts, and unpublished manuscripts to give a clear and candid account of the Oglala’s struggles, as reflected and perhaps epitomized in Two Sticks’s life and the miscarriage of justice that ended with his death. Bracketed by the run-up to, and craven political motivation behind, Wounded Knee and the later revelations establishing Two Sticks’s innocence, this is a history of a people threatened with extinction and of one man felled in a battle for survival hopelessly weighted in the white man’s favor. With eyewitness immediacy, this rigorously researched and deeply informed account at long last makes plain the painful truth behind a dark period in U.S. history.

Recounts events leading up to the last battle fought between white men and Indians, in which approximately two hundred men, women, and children of the Sioux tribe were slaughtered by United States cavalrymen.

The story of the last deaths in the American Indian wars and their far-reaching ramifications The massacre of at least 150 Indians by the U.S. Army along Wounded Knee Creek in the Lakota reservation on December 29, 1890 generally is considered the closing salvo in America's Indian Wars. But as Roger L. Di Silvestro reveals in startling detail, the fight was hardly over. Two tragic events in the weeks immediately following would reignite the conflict and forever color its legacy. In the Shadow of Wounded Knee is the first book to chronicle the senseless killings that riveted the country in 1891: the assassination of Lieutenant Edward Casey by the young Brulé Lakota warrior Plenty Horses, and the ambush of Few Tails and two other Indians by rancher Pete Culbertsons and his brothers. According to frontier justice of the day, Plenty Horses would have been summarily hanged and the Culbertsons would never have been tried. Yet in the aftermath of Wounded Knee--a slaughter that had horrified politicians, soldiers, and citizens alike--the trial of Plenty Horses made headlines nationwide as a cause célèbre. Soon prosecutors faced a quandary: if Plenty Horses were convicted, then the Army itself would have to be held accountable for its actions at Wounded Knee. How Plenty Horses--a "civilized" Indian who was educated in a school back east--was ultimately exonerated, and the Culbertsons were forced to stand trial, forms a fascinating closing chapter in the Indian Wars and in the last days of the Old West.

"In the winter of 1890, U.S. Government forces massacred nearly 300 Indian people, mainly women and children, after they had surrendered all but one of their weapons. The site of the massacre was Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the winter of 1973, several hundred Oglala Sioux and their supporters from other tribes returned to Wounded Knee to make a stand ... This stand on Indian land for Indian rights were met by the U.S. Government with armored personnel carriers, helicopters, automatic rifles, and other Viet Nam era weapons. But for 71 days no Federal law enforcement personnel or Bureau of Indian Affairs officials had any authority in Wounded Knee. For 71 days, through countless battles and negotiating sessions, and despite the Government's blockade of food, fuel, and medical supplies, a self-governing community was built. This book is a documentary about the occupation."--Editor's Introduction.

The latest edition of an accessible and comprehensive survey of Native America In this newly revised third edition of Native America: A History, Michael Leroy Oberg and Peter Jakob Olsen-Harbich deliver a thoroughly updated, incisive narrative history of North America’s Indigenous peoples. The authors aim to provide readers with an overview of the principal themes and developments in Native American history, from the first peopling of the continent to the present, by following twelve Native communities whose histories serve as exemplars for the common experiences of North America’s diverse Indigenous nations. This textbook centers the history of Native America and presents it as flowing through channels distinct from those of the United States. This is a history of nations not merely acted upon, but rather of those that have responded to, resisted, ignored, and shaped the efforts of foreign powers to control their story. This new edition has been comprehensively updated in all its chapters and expanded with wider coverage of the most significant recent events and trends in Native America through the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Native America: A History, Third Edition also includes: A survey of pre-Columbian North American traditions and the various ways in which these traditions were deployed to comprehend and respond to the arrival of Europeans. In-depth examinations of how Native nations navigated the challenges of colonialism and fought to survive while marginalized behind the frontiers of European empires and the United States. Nuanced analyses of how Indigenous peoples balanced the economic benefits offered by assimilation with the cultural and political imperatives of maintaining traditions and sovereignty. An accessible presentation of American tribal law and the strategies used by Native nations to establish government-to-government relationships with the United States despite the repeated failures of that state to honor its legal commitments. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students seeking a broad historical treatment of Indigenous peoples in the United States, Native America: A History, Third Edition will earn a place in the libraries of anyone with an interest in seeking an authoritative and engaging survey of Native American history.