Dr. Ben Jones:
I'm Dr. Ben Jones, state historian for the state of South Dakota. And today, joining me on the podcast is Jerome Greene, the author of a new book, All Guns Fired at One Time: Native Voices at Wounded Knee, 1890. Jerry wrote the book in 2020, came out last year, kind of during the pandemic and so forth. Today, Jerry lives in Denver, Colorado. He's a US Army veteran. He attended Black Hill State and USD before earning a graduate degree at the University of Oklahoma. Jerry also taught at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, and had a long career with the National Park Service as a historian with them. He's the author of many books. And we welcome Jerry to History 605.
Jerome Greene:
Well, thank you very much. It's my pleasure, great pleasure to be here with you today.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Jerry, the topic, certainly the Wounded Knee Massacre is one of the darkest days in American history, and has cast a long shadow over the United States' 20th century history and South Dakota history, and tribal relations, and so forth. And has prompted bills up until... I think in Congress there's bills circulating as we speak. But there are also considerations taken up early on in the 1920s and '30s and so forth. The 7th Cavalry, in fact, debates the actions that its members took that day, and the meaning of the Medals of Honor and so forth conferred upon some of them. And all of that, now we have your book, Jerry, and I wonder if you could share what this book might bring to this 130 year old memory and history of that dark day?
Jerome Greene:
Well, let's say that I did a book several years ago on Wounded Knee called American Carnage, 1890, Wounded Knee 1890 that was an in depth over... Not an overview, but an in depth study of what happened at Wounded Knee and the massacre clear up into the 20th century, well into the 20th century, when there was there a fight for reparations in Congress and so forth. I decided after that I had explored Indian accounts. I've always been captivated by native accounts of their engagements in the west with the soldiers. And I used a good portion of them as you know in the book American Carnage. And so I thought that talking with officials at the historical society, that there might be an interest in pulling these together in one volume and a to provide a single volume with all the known personal native accounts of Wounded Knee by survivors and witnesses together with certain other pertinent materials related directly or varying on those accounts. And hence this volume materialized over a few years after my American Carnage book.
Dr. Ben Jones:
There's a long list of accounts in here by the survivors. Black Elk is in here I think at least once. Yes. And who were the ones that might be best to start with, I guess? Which accounts might be most emblematic of the event?
Jerome Greene:
For the Lakotas, which had mentioned the Wounded Knee kind of stood as an exclamation point to all that they had endured from the 1850s and '60s forward I think. And for them what happened at Wounded Knee was truly cataclysmic to their relatively small society and something of an existential way. And that this book wants to present their recollections in their own words, the recollections and reflections of Lakota participants, but it also hopes to present the views of native scouts, those who served with the army as well as non native medical personnel who took part in or who witnessed and reported say on other related elements regarding what happened at Wounded Knee, as well as in the hospital facility and the church with the medical treatment and so forth. So that's essentially what I wanted to present, both the early views and the later views. And there's some distinction between those, if you'd care to talk about those.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Yeah, I would, I think that's an interesting point. So the earlier views probably more focused on just the shock of the event or were in the echo of that shock.
Jerome Greene:
Absolutely. The earliest native accounts, I see them in two categories, essentially. The first ones talked about and reflected the personal family elements of the Wounded Knee tragedy for posterity among all the people, as well as for the edification of non-Indians as it turned out. So the very earliest views are the ones of the direct survivors. And I would point out that most of them or many of them came from a combat veteran Indians who were in the Wounded Knee massacre took part in protecting their people.
But as well as some of the women who survived, and I should point out that most of the adult males did not survive and so a lot of the accounts that came forward in the later years were by women who were witnesses and some participants in the village. Those were the early accounts. And the later accounts that appeared in say the early 1900s, and maybe especially those during the 1930s, there's another surge of accounts that came forward and they reflected at that time efforts to gain some kind of monetary compensation for the losses at Wounded Knee. So there's kind of an interesting disparity here in the kinds of accounts and what motivated the accounts [crosstalk 00:07:58] explain the tragedy that had happened to them and secondarily for seeking compensation of some kind for it.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Right. Well, perhaps we should go back a little bit and just kind of run through. For the audience that may not be as familiar with the story as you and I are, what is this? What is Wounded Knee? Why did it happen and who was involved? I guess, can you just kind of give us a quick two to five minute kind of synopsis?
Jerome Greene:
The great Sioux Reservation is the center post this discussion right now, following the Indian Wars of the 1860s, '50s, '60s and '70s, the Lakota's as well as some of their support in related people tribes signed in 1868, the treaty of Fort Laramie in Wyoming, and that established for them what we call the great Sioux Reservation. And this was a huge portion of land that bordered the Missouri river on the west side and extended... In essence, it included and comprised the western half of the present state of South Dakota. And in later years, as whites moved further west and wanted to move into areas that were included in the great Sioux Reservation, the Sioux resisted this, but nonetheless, the government tried to accommodate and met with the people several times. And finally in 1889, they met and the government secured what they called the 1889 Sioux land act, which reduced the great Sioux Reservation to rather than one large reservation that was reduced to five subordinate smaller reservations.
And it opened the intervening lands to white settlement. And this was a disastrous move for the Sioux and it triggered a lot of negative results, including ultimately reduced their beef issue, which had been calming since '70s on the reservation. And it was accompanied by a lot of natural elements that affected the people disastrously, including a drought, a massive drought, many sicknesses that racked the people, especially in the winter of 1889. There were great sicknesses of influenza and the whooping cough and measles, pneumonia.
They all appeared on reservation or what was left of the reservation and all of these combined to bring such a dissatisfaction and discomfort among the people that they turn to transcendent help in the form of the ghost stance, which had been practiced in some of the western territories. And they adopted precepts of the ghost dancers as a means to somehow salvage their lives and existence as they knew them. The elements of the ghost dance, which consisted mainly of dances that were strange to whites and lots of whites that populated the territory saw them as threatening. And they felt that the white settlement in settlers were going to be somehow hurt in the surrounding country. And that ultimately brought on request for troops to be sent and the rest and in fact, there's the Wounded Knee campaign that resulted in such dire tragedy for the Lakota people.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Yeah. There was a lot of mysticism that's going on that's really misinterpreted by many of the whites, I think. And we have a map in the archives at the historical society that notes the troop movements in western South Dakota in this time, and they call it the Messiah War was the term that the US army seemed to use for the ghost dancers.
Jerome Greene:
Yes. Yeah. The Messiah was God or Christ was going to return and save the people somehow. This is not unusual. People in this stage of existence often turned to deities for assistance and help. And so there was nothing really unusual for this, but it was so profoundly reported in the press that it drew an awful lot of attention. And some of the fears of the settlers in the region just became so inordinate that the government did succumb and send troops. And that was the final lead up to what happened at Wounded Knee.
Dr. Ben Jones:
So it seems to me that there's an environment of a great deal of misunderstanding, fear, tension, and recent history of battles that come to blows and things got out of hand. And this is just kind of a recipe for what could be disaster without strong leadership to, well, keep a lid on things as this group of people that is moving down from one reservation to another, where they've been invited to come and join Red Cloud. I wonder if, as you go through the testimonies that you put in the book, are there any references to the ghost dance?
Jerome Greene:
Yes, I believe there are. That was the fundamental reason that the troops were there. But the odd thing was the people didn't understand what was happening when the troops confronted them. When the troops over west of Wounded Knee proper a few miles actually confronted them on the 28th of December and ushered them over to the army camp at Wounded Knee, along Wounded Knee Creek, about oh eight or nine miles west of where they were confronted. They were surprised at this, but probably it was not unexpected among them.
They certainly had ways to find out what was going on, but nonetheless, it was something of a surprise when they were ushered over there and then surrounded and more troops were brought in that evening, along with Hotchkiss guns, which they didn't even know about. There were I believe four Hotchkiss guns. Two had come out earlier. But two more were sent from Pine Ridge, the agency, and reached there during the night of the 28th and 29th of December. And when they heard that guns being mounted that night in the dark, I was sure they were privy by then to what possibly could occur. And it must've scared the heck out of them to know that they were possibly being targeted in that way.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Yes. And so the next morning when the order goes out to turn in their firearms from the US army soldiers, the seventh Calvary soldiers to turn in their firearms or for the natives to turn in their firearms, you can imagine that very tense situation. And when one gun goes off, which hearkens to the title of your book, I'm wondering if you can maybe illuminate that particular testimony that you share about where that quote comes from the title of your book, All Guns Fired At One Time is in quotes from one of the testimonies. And I'm wondering if you can kind of use that as a way to describe the incident from the perspective of the person who said that.
Jerome Greene:
That was from a man named Dog Chief, who was there in the council area at the time, the morning of the 29th, the Colonel commanding the troops had requested that all the men join him in a convocation at the designated spot on kind of level ground from their camp, which was to the southwest of that level ground.
And the men wet up there and the Colonel talked to them and tried to explain what he wanted to do. Now, unbeknownst to the people, the plan, as we've only learned in fairly recent years, was that they were to be disarmed and then marched down to Gordon, Nebraska, where they were to be put on trains. That is to remove them to Omaha, to get them out of the region where the citizens as well as the army feared that something might erupt if they were not removed. And that was the initial plan, but that of course went awry in that council area as I think most of the accounts in the book allude to, but the man again is Dog Chief, one of the people in the council area who witnessed Wounded Knee and his account was in the book.
Dr. Ben Jones:
And what is the meaning of all guns fired at one time, kind of tactically, what does that mean?
Jerome Greene:
Well, the perspective was on what happened was that all the guns, that is the army guns, fired at once into the people. Now, that's not necessarily the way the massacre erupted in the council area, but that's what the people remembered, that all the guns fired at one time. And several accounts say that many of the guns went off at one time after there was a little disturbance with one young man who did not want to relinquish as a weapon. And he resisted one or two sergeants who tried to take it from him as the council proceeded. And the gun finally went off and that triggered everybody rushing for cover. And apparently many, many of the soldier guns all fired into the Indians at one time. And I chose that as a title of the book, because I thought that kind of represented the native point of view of that incident.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Okay. We talked earlier about how the testimony has changed over time due to the person who's speaking due to the time that's elapsed since the incident and the audience that they would be speaking to as a part of that. Kind of along that vein, I'm wondering if you could speak to say a high school student, a college student who might be using this book to learn about the battle, to do research about the battle. What advice would you give them and how to use this book in the most productive way?
Jerome Greene:
Well, to comment on your remark, that they were kind of two categories in the account that I saw. The earliest ones of Wounded Knee reflected the personal and family elements of what happened this tragedy for posterity among the Lakota people, as well as for the edification of us, non-Indians I think. Those early views are one thing. And then later views, I should say, came out in the early 1900s and especially in the 1930s, and they reflected efforts I believe to gain federal recognition and monetary compensation for the Wounded Knee losses. So there's a difference of purpose and the first accounts from the second accounts. And what was the other part of your question?
Dr. Ben Jones:
Well, and you were leading right into it. How does somebody who wants to look at this for research purposes or just for a fuller understanding, how should they distinguish between those two types of accounts? What's the meaning and why is there a difference and what might you want to look out for if you're trying to understand the massacre?
Jerome Greene:
Well, I think that you've got to look at all the accounts and then separate them, segregate them in your mind as you're going through them as to which they pertain to. The government documents on Wounded Knee are a major part of the story, but they also include some medical diaries, which I've included that never appeared in print before. And the accounts regarding the treatment of the wounded. So the government documents should not be ignored simply because they contain a government perspective. There are also native accounts included in published government documents, as you'll see.
Another area is newspaper accounts and both in the weeks, as well as the months that followed directly on Wounded Knee, a number of reminiscing accounts of participants, native accounts provided by relatives of those people who took part at Wounded Knee, talking about Lakota people that appeared occasionally in the press through decades following Wounded Knee, and perhaps into even into the 1960s and '70s. I think I've got one [inaudible 00:25:47] account in there that resulted from some of these came from online searches that I did on the internet, using names and other clues that would pop them up.
But other accounts I'd say early and later accounts by Lakota survivors, often from the women and grown sons and daughters who were present at the scene because most of the adult males were killed there. Most of those people did not survive. And so their wives and their daughters and sons later spoke in some of these accounts. If for somebody's looking for accounts, I suggest that the judge Eli Ricker papers at the Nebraska State Historical Society now known as History Nebraska, my guess is at all of these are available in published books now. Either mine or a good selection I know was in a Richard Jensen book, the Indian interviews of Ricker and that came out in early 2000's by the university of Nebraska press.
There are also university collections, college collections, and I would urge students to visit Black Hills State University. In fact, I got some great material out of the Thomas Odell collection at Black Hills State in Spearfish. Another primary repository is the Walter Mason Camp collection. And that is that the University Brigham Young university in Provo, Utah. The camp manuscripts exist at the... I have a list of them here, the Lilly library at Indiana university in Bloomington and the Robert Ellison and Walter Camp papers at the Denver Public Library. Also in South Dakota, the special collections of the university of South Dakota in Vermillion.
And that facility contains a Wounded Knee survivor association papers. The Frances H. Case Papers at the George and Eleanor McGovern Library at Dakota Wesleyan in Mitchell. And finally, my dear friend, Michael Many Horses who I could not have written either of these books without my dear friend Michael passed away two years ago. He was a wonderful guy. His papers that I got borrowed from his collection. I don't know if they're available, but perhaps through the Oglala Lakota College on the reservation there.
And for anything else, I would suggest that students look at the bibliography of my book, American Carnage. I would point one other thing out to you. Perhaps some of these people lived for decades after Wounded Knee, and I was absolutely flabbergasted to learn about a lady named Jessie Running Horse on the Pine Ridge reservation. She was two years old in 1890, when she came south with their parents accompanying Big Foot's group. Can you believe that she died in 1977?
At Pine Ridge. And she was either the last or among the last survivors of the Lakotas to survive Wounded Knee. That just knocked me for a loop when I found reference to her. I would have loved to have met her. What a wonderful lady she must've been.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Well, Jerry, just to kind of wrap up here, I think given as you've gone through the extensive research that you've done, just by kind of highlighting a bit of a bibliography here for your two books on this, as we would take this into the future and might be confronted with a very tense situation in the future, either between nations or groups or among two people who happened to be neighbors, what is the question that one could ask in order to have a far better result than the one that occurred in December of 1890 in this situation? In other words, not necessarily is there a lesson that kind of immediately translates over, but what is the question about how to think about one might be confronted in a similar situation in the future?
Jerome Greene:
I'd say, listen, we have better ways of listening today than they had back in those days. Keep your eyes and ears open and try to get along. I can't think of anything, but trying to coexist with our fellow men. And hopefully we do it in a better way today than they did back then when communication was not as good as supposedly as it is today.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Well, Jerry, thanks a lot for your joining us today. We certainly appreciate it. And we certainly thank you for this great accomplishment of a book and all the other writings that you've provided.
Jerome Greene:
Well thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Well, we'd like to thank our sponsor, the South Dakota Historical Society Foundation and our partner of the 605 Podcast, South Dakota Public Broadcasting. But most importantly, we want to thank you, our listener of the show. If you enjoyed it, I hope you'll share on social media and tell your friends about us. Now, go do some history.