Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory by David W. Grua

Americans and Lakota alike were shocked when they learned that on December 29, 1890, the Seventh Cavalry had killed some two hundred members of Big Foot’s band along a two-mile stretch near Wounded Knee Creek. Although newspapers and military officers quickly lauded the actions of the brave men of the Seventh Cavalry, controversy soon erupted over the cavalry’s actions as stories of the slaughter of unarmed men, women, and children began to reach the East Coast. The massacre at Wounded Knee continues to interest historians as they try to understand exactly what transpired on that fateful day. The difficulty in reconstructing events is that much of the documentation comes from non-Lakota sources including military personnel, reservation agents, newspaper reporters, religious leaders, teachers, and local white residents. In addition, conflicting stories surround nearly every aspect of the event from antecedent factors such as the rise of the ghost dance among Lakota people, the journey to Pine Ridge undertaken by Big Foot and his people, and the disarming of Lakota people at Wounded Knee to public and official accounts that followed in the aftermath. Most scholarly historical interpretations have focused primarily on the ghost dance or the massacre as they reexamine and reinterpret written documents of the time, including those collected in the immediate decades following the event.

In Surviving Wounded Knee, David W. Grua attends primarily not to the ghost dance or the massacre but rather to the way in which the American memory of the event was shaped by those with a vested interest in its remembrance as a heroic battle. He demonstrates throughout the book how the logic of race war informed interpretations of interactions between Lakota and Americans, which made the way most Americans understood the event not only plausible but necessary to the reinforcement of the American story of the advance of a superior civilization. The dominant version of the story of Wounded Knee resulted from the deliberate and strategic efforts of those who benefitted most from a heroic version, and further, it gained traction and legitimacy from those responsible for investigating alternative versions provided by Lakota and a few Americans.

The effect of creating an authoritative narrative in a colonial context went beyond controlling the narrative, as Grua demonstrates. That authoritative narrative worked against Lakota interests as Wounded Knee survivors and their descendants repeatedly sought compensation for their losses that resulted from the massacre. From the 1930s to the 1970s, Congress continually failed to introduce or pass a bill addressing Lakota compensation by relying on the logic of race war that informed the authoritative version of Wounded Knee.

Although this book contributes to our understanding of the events at Wounded Knee, its significance lies in how effectively Grua carefully studies military reports, congressional records, Bureau of Indian Affairs papers, as well as other primary and secondary sources to explain the persistence of the authoritative American version of the event. That version held credence from its inception immediately following the massacre into the twentieth century in the face of alternative versions documented in oral tradition by Lakota and in reports submitted by Major General Nelson A. Miles.

Significantly, Grua gives much-needed attention to Lakota efforts to create counter narratives of the event, digging deeply into available resources to trace how Wounded Knee survivors recounted the massacre. However, a few of these instances that Grua lightly touches upon could have received more attention, such as the claims of observing drunkenness among the officers and troops, the presence of untrained militia among the troops, and the tactics utilized by officers at Wounded Knee. A related memory that he finds to be widespread among the Lakota that supports the authoritative version is the interpretation of the massacre as revenge for George Armstrong Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn. Although perhaps impossible to determine definitively, the story nonetheless begs the question of whether or not revenge for Custer determined the actions of the Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee or if that interpretation of their actions became popular after the fact as it generated patriotic enthusiasm for the authoritative version. In any case, this book provides insight into how the survivors of Wounded Knee preserved, publicized, and strategically employed their narratives in response to the dominant American narrative.

Surviving Wounded Knee offers insight into an aspect of the massacre at Wounded Knee that has received little attention: how the authoritative memory of the event developed and ultimately informed congressional action. Grua aptly demonstrates how the national memory of Wounded Knee was shaped in a colonial context, persisted in the face of contradictory evidence, and served to work against the interests of the survivors of Wounded Knee. His is not a one-sided story but one that works to provide a more balanced analysis of the memory of Lakota survivors of Wounded Knee with that of the authoritative national memory.