Picking a Version

Battery E, 1st Artillery who took part in massacre at Wounded Knee

Attempting to understand and decipher history – real history – is hard.

We read, we question, we read some more, we check our sources for ideological bias, we read someone else’s revision of canonical sources, we sniff around for hidden motivations and contingencies…

And when we think we’ve got to the deepest level of interpretation, there is always another angle to consider.

Consider the massacre at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1890.

For those unfamiliar with this piece of American history, the bare bones of what happened is this:

The US government had signed treaties with the Lakota, primarily to protect colonisers passing through Lakota territory on the Oregon Trail to the American Northwest.  The government of the US of America undertook to enforce a restriction on US citizens settling on Lakota territory.

The government of the US of America did not honor its undertakings as per treaty.

The discovery of gold in the Dakotas led to a mass influx of ruffians, squatters, and miners.

The introduction of forts and railroads on and over treaty-protected Lakota territory led to further conflict.

As part of its policy of ethnic-cleansing, the US encouraged and facilitated the shooting to extinction of the Great Plains bison, which were the main source of sustenance for Indigenous peoples of the Plains.

As part of its policy of ethnic-cleansing, the US allowed the mass settlement of Scandinavian immigrants in the Dakotas.

Under-employed veterans from the Civil War and newly enlisted men were sent west to put down Lakota resistance.

These early military expeditions against the Lakota and their allies were failures.

But “Custer’s Last Stand” is probably the worst name for any historical event in US history.  It really should be called “The Lakota’s Last Stand”, for their battlefield victory at Little Big Horn would see the US throw its full weight behind neutralising the Lakota – the last self-governing group of Indigenous people in the lands now called the USA.

The Wounded Knee Massacre came at the tail end of various “mopping-up” operations by the US military, as remnant bands of Lakota were being rounded-up and forced onto small reservations.

Put simply, while force-marching a band of Lakota to a reservation, a roughneck bunch of green army recruits attempted to collect all firearms from the people being force-marched.

What happened next – the death of scores of Lakota people including women and children – is a perfect example of history which has been told from multiple angles…

1) Murica hoo-hah! version

Decent army boys (thank you for your service) just doing their job, and those darn “Injuns” went crazy, and we had to shoot the shit out of them in self defence.

2) Vietnam era hippy version

Gentle nature-worshipping people meaning no harm are brutally slain by colonialist oppressors.

3) Historian No. 1 version

Americans already inured to violence by the Civil War, along with recent immigrant recruits eager to “prove their worth”, are only too happy to fight wars against people they see as “savages”.

4) Historian No. 2 version

This mass shooting was a tragic escalation, in which army recruits already on edge due to their misunderstanding of the meaning of the “Ghost Dance” religious movement, saw danger in every aspect of Lakota behavior.

*****

There is something wrong with every one of these versions.

And only by digging, digging, digging can we hope to get a proper picture of such terrible events.

American “hoo-hah!” apologists for Manifest Destiny will point out that the Lakota were themselves a warlike people.  After all, the original homeland of the Lakota was around the Great Lakes, and they were only in Dakota Territory recently, having taken those hunting grounds from the Crow people through warfare.

The hippy version also ignores the warlike nature of the Lakota.

The “proper” historical versions have their own specific angles of interpretation.

Every version seeks to blame, excuse, demonise, explain or justify.

No humans are saints.  None are innocent “Children of God”.

But whoever we see as our enemy, there is a crystal moment of clarity when we can choose to do wrong, or try to do right.

There is no historical interpretation which will ever make it right, that men turned machine guns on women and children crouching for cover, terrified, in a deep ravine in mid-winter South Dakota.

And to those who insist that Wounded Knee was a tragic mistake?

On the shared image, you’ll find a piece of doggerel poetry.

People ashamed of a “tragic mistake” do not proudly pose for photos, and write such things.

Pick your version(s).