Review by Randy Brich
A magnificent mesmerizing masterpiece of epic historical proportions, read this one and you can forget all the others. At least that’s my unabashed but informed opinion of retired National Park Service Historian Jerome Greene’s latest book, AMERICAN CARNAGE: WOUNDED KNEE, 1890.
Through extensive research of period newspapers, affected individuals’ diaries, army reports, survivors’ eye-witness accounts and other miscellaneous sources, mostly contained in private libraries, Greene’s learned tome puts you in Western South Dakota before, during and after the Ghost Dance Era.
The Ghost Dance began in the desert Southwest as a peaceful demonstration anticipating the coming of a Messiah who would return the buffalo and all the Indian relatives who had been destroyed by the whites while concomitantly annihilating the whites in a fracture of the earth. At its height in South Dakota, tragedy struck in the form of a slaughter of “innocents – women and children” following a defensive battle that was literally over in moments. The ensuing melee quickly evolved into a massacre which became synonymous with Wounded Knee, 1890.
Greene focuses on the “why and how” the tragedy evolved from Wovoka’s peaceful vision to a perceived violent movement characterized by a craze in western South Dakota that burned intensely through the non-progressives (i.e., Traditionalists) of the Lakota Nation like a lightning-sparked prairie grass fire. Just as a prairie grass fire consumes everything in its path that doesn’t get out of the way so did the Ghost Dance.
Greene pieces together all the relevant bits of the puzzle – from the drought, to reduced beef rations, to sensationalistic newspaper accounts, to misleading telegrams from an inexperienced Pine Ridge agent appointed through the political spoils process, to settlers’ actions based on fear from all the rumors amplified by the newspapers, to the largest troop deployment since the Civil War – ending up with as complete a picture as possible regarding this enigmatic event.
Greene details how all of these elements combined to form a perfect storm that decimated Big Foot’s (Spotted Elk) band of Brules who had been joined by remnants of Sitting Bull’s fleeing Hunkpapa’s and a smattering of Miniconjus on their journey to safety at Pine Ridge Agency in late December 1890. They never made it to Pine Ridge. Stopped by the army nearby and moved to Wounded Knee, the tragedy unfolded the next morning as the soldiers attempted to disarm the warriors and as they say – the rest is history.
What does Wounded Knee have to do with nuclear power you might be wondering right about now? For one, during Wounded Knee the regional newspapers were primarily anti-Indian and pro-development. Today, the regional newspapers are pro-Indian and anti-development — a complete reversal from their stance a little more than a century ago.
As you know nuclear power needs uranium and a current attempt to recover uranium in southwestern South Dakota, about 90 miles away as the raven flies from Wounded Knee, is being sensationalized by regional newspapers spreading fear among the citizens similar to the sensationalism exhibited by newspapers at Wounded Knee.
Despite receiving a license from the USNRC following an extensive NEPA process, including the issuance of a Final SEIS, the regional newspaper, the Rapid City Journal, spreads mis-information amplifying fear created by a small but very vocal minority which is orchestrated by an even smaller core group of long-time anti-nuclear activists giving us a modern day corollary to the phrase “history repeats itself” in a very unusual way.
Brich is a former NRC Health Physicist who licensed and inspected conventional mills and in situ uranium recovery facilities and also has consulted with a uranium company in southwestern South Dakota.