Wounded Knee Remembered...

Big Foot leader pinned on first day of ride

By PETER HARRIMAN Argus Leader
http://www.argusleader.com/news/Saturdayarticle1.shtml
published: 12/16/00

BULLHEAD -- The horse lay still on its side in the ravine, black head extended on white snow.

"He's got me pinned," Jess Knight said calmly. With his free hand he still held aloft the Sobriety Staff covered with bison hide and flying an eagle feather.

Less than a mile into the two-week Big Foot Memorial Ride through South Dakota commemorating Sitting Bull's death and the Wounded Knee massacre, it appeared catastrophe had struck. Knight was maneuvering the horse up the ravine when it slipped on ice and went down. After several tense minutes, other dismounted riders managed to roll the animal enough for Knight to scramble free.

The horse lurched to its feet. Knight, of Eagle Butte, who is helping to organize this year's ride, got back in the saddle and took his place at the head of the group with the staff, and the ride continued. The moment was testimony to determined horsemen taking on a huge challenge.

This day opened with pickups towing horse trailers nosing their way down a long, lonely frozen dirt road to a historical marker and a simple white stone monument near a grove of dark, bare timber on the Grand River. Here was the site of Sitting Bull's cabin. Here he died when tribal police sent to arrest him got into a shootout with his supporters and killed him.

The riders plan to complete the 180-mile trek and arrive in Wounded Knee Dec. 29, where they will mark the anniversary of the massacre that followed Sitting Bull's death in 1890.

Felix Kidder, a Standing Rock elder from Fort Yates, N.D., recounted the story of Sitting Bull's death standing in a semi-circle of eight mounted riders. His words gave purpose to their quest.

A brisk December wind whipped the group as the semi-circle broke into a line of horses winding their way single file across the frozen river and through the breaks on the far bank as a handful of onlookers watched.

As they cleared the riverside timber and the hills beyond, the riders frequently kicked the horses into a trot or canter on the sweeping prairie.

At an afternoon stop, several others joined the group. And late in the day, as the route took them along a gravel road, a couple of horses played out and finished this segment of the journey in a trailer.

After 20 or more miles, the remaining riders jogged down the streets of Timber Lake at dusk, to stock pens on the edge of town. The horses were fed, watered and turned into the pens for the night.

Today, the ride continues south another 20 miles or so, Knight said, as he gave the horses a final check and followed the last rider to a communal dinner.

It had begun to snow lightly, and the wind was picking up. But these are horsemen and Lakota behind this endeavor. The ride, they say, will go on.
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

Riding to remember
BY Peter Harriman
Argus Leader

published: 12/17/00

BULLHEAD -- Mid-morning on the 110th anniversary of Sitting Bull's death, a heavy, gray winter sky wraps empty hills bordering the horizon. Pickups and horse trailers are parked near a small memorial that indicates the site of the cabin where Sitting Bull was killed by tribal police in a shootout Dec. 15, 1890.

Tied to the fence surrounding the historical plaque and the white stone monument that make up the memorial is a tall paint horse with an eagle feather in its mane.

Sitting Bull would no doubt be pleased.

A man whose leadership united the northern plains Indians in an effort to maintain their traditional life as nomadic hunters and horsemen more than a century ago, and whose personal example was a guide to them to retain their identity as Indians even after they had been defeated in war, is a part of the axis around which a cultural rebirth is taking place.

Eight riders depart from here on the beginning leg of the annual Big Foot Memorial Ride. Over the course of the next two weeks, many additional riders are expected to join in as the ride winds south through South Dakota 180 miles to Wounded Knee.

The ride commemorates the historical events of Sitting Bull's death, the flight of his supporters led by Chief Big Foot to the Badlands and the slaughter of more than 250 of them by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek. But to these Lakota horsemen, this winter challenge of endurance also is an opportunity to get in touch with a heritage that once defined them and is doing so again.

As the group set out Friday morning from the memorial, riders crossed the frozen Grand River and threaded their way through a screen of timber, then opened up into a lope toward the hills beyond. Jess Knight rode at the head with the sobriety staff held high from an outstretched arm. Other groups with other staffs customarily swell the ranks of the riders as the event progresses.

"Whoever has the staff tries to stay up front as long as they can," Kermit Miner explains. He's acting as a support driver for this year's ride, but on four previous occasions he was among a group of runners who, racing in relay, led the ride bearing their own staff. To prepare for that, they would train two months in advance, he remembers.

When the staff is handed off, its bearer "will give it to a good responsible one they think can make a change in their life. Within the staff are so many prayers. That staff does carry a lot of prayers," Miner says.

"We carry it for the people who are still drinking, using drugs and alcohol," says Elliott Ward of Fort Yates N.D. "This staff has been on 50 or 60 rides. It's been to Canada four times, Devil's Tower, Wounded Knee four or five times, Montana, Minnesota."

Ward has been the staff keeper "seven or eight years," and he acquired it when Felix Kidder, leader of the Fort Yates Sun Dance, made the staff in accordance with a vision.

This ride itself began with a vision. In 1986, Alex White Plume, Birgil Kills Straight and about eight others started four years of rides designed to liberate the spirits of the Wounded Knee victims and to complete the traditional Lakota cycle of grieving for them. Curtis Kills Ree, an Oglala spiritual leader, had that vision and gave White Plume and Kills Straight their charge.

By 1990, the 100th anniversary of the massacre, the ride had acquired hundreds of participants. That year the journey was undertaken in celebration of the completion of Kills Straight and White Plume's task and for the renewed interest in traditional Lakota beliefs, language and practices that has sprung up in South Dakota in the past decade. Since 1990, the rides have continued to honor Lakota culture.

One hundred and ten years ago, the Indians trailing across the winter landscape had little to celebrate.

A group of about 40 fled the Standing Rock Reservation after Sitting Bull was killed during a botched attempt to arrest him. The Indian agent at Standing Rock, James McLaughlin, was determined to eliminate Sitting Bull as a leader and ordered him arrested for participating in the new Ghost Dance religion, which had sprung from a Paiute shaman's vision in Nevada. It foresaw a return of traditional life to Indians in a world replenished with bison and horses and emptied of whites. Sitting Bull, a mystic in his own right, was studying this claim but had not yet decided to embrace it.

After he was shot and killed resisting arrest, his Hunkpapa followers headed south until crossing Big Foot's band of Miniconjous on their way to Fort Bennett for government-issued food and supplies. Convinced they were all in danger, the combined group tried to reach safety with Oglala allies but were intercepted and captured by a U.S. Army command. Escorted under a flag of truce, the Indians were being taken to the Red Cloud Agency when they camped for the night at Wounded Knee Creek.

The Seventh Cavalry reinforced the army during the night. It set up a perimeter around the Indian camp and overlooked it with four Hotchkiss cannons.

The following morning, as the soldiers were disarming the Indians, a scuffle broke out over a rifle, a shot was fired, and the troops fired a volley into about 90 assembled warriors while two of the cannons opened up on the camp full of women and children.

Survivors of the initial attack tried to flee, but the soldiers ran them down and continued the slaughter.

Ron McNeil has made the ride in memory of the massacre since 1988.

"It gets harder every year," he sighs, sprawling back exhausted in a chair in a Timber Lake council house, where the riders and support vehicle drivers spent Friday night.

President of Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, he notes his school's enrollment of about 300, and the growth of tribal colleges generally. They have become significant cultural reservoirs for Indian nations. In this way they help fulfill Sitting Bull's goal to keep Indians true to themselves.

A Lakota heritage of fortitude certainly came to the fore the second day of the ride Saturday. That bitter trek took the horsemen from the Webber corrals at Timber Lake to the Bill Opp ranch about 20 miles south. The riders had stood about the council house kitchen Saturday morning in coveralls and coats piled on over heaps of sweaters and sweatshirts. The ambient temperature outside was 11 below zero. The wind chill made it feel like 60 below. There was some wistful conversation about letting the day warm up and riding in the afternoon. But about mid morning the group began drifting down to the corrals and saddled hunched and shivering horses.

The ride had grown from the first day, and after saddling up, about a dozen men, women and children on horseback and outlandishly garbed against the cold circled McNeil. He exhorted the riders to remember Big Foot's people wrapped in blankets and rags 110 years ago instead of modern winter clothing, and he invoked the Grandfather "to protect the horses, who are doing all the work" and to help the riders pray with their animals throughout the day. As they did the first day, the riders passed through a smudge of sage smoke and headed out over an icy crust of snow.

Again, Jess Knight led them with the Sobriety staff. In his hooded blanket coat, he led the entire way on a black horse that was nearly frosted gray by the time they reached the Opp Ranch. Most riders rode only a portion of the route and accepted rides from the support convoy of pickups and horse trailers when they or their mounts gave out in the astonishing cold. Arvol Looking Horse of Green Grass, keeper of the Lakota Sacred Pipe, rode the second half of the route. He started out wearing a long war bonnet of eagle feathers but soon discarded it when the wind whipping the headdress must have nearly given him whiplash.

McNeil, one of the principal riders Friday, drove a support rig Saturday, a motor home.

It was the place for the group to gather, warm up, and share the successful completion of another day's ride.

Besides being a tribal college president and a Big Foot Memorial Rider, McNeil is also a great-great-great grandson of Sitting Bull. In his own bright red wool blanket coat that stood out against the snow and the overhanging gloomy sky at his famous ancestor's memorial Friday, McNeil sat his horse and listened to Fort Yates Elder and Sobriety Staff maker Felix Kidder send the group on the first leg of the trek commemorating two tragedies that devastated the Lakotas.

McNeil comes to this place twice a year, for the Big Foot Memorial Ride and for a summer Sun Dance, and he says he always has this thought: "This never would have happened if Sitting Bull didn't die. All these events that took place, they never would have happened."

=====
Freedom for Leonard Peltier, Standing deer & Red Hawk
     http://members.tripod.com/sapawiyaka
     Lakota Dakota Nakota Spiritual Group
     Sioux Falls,South Dakota

Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

Smooth journey relies on tradition, workers behind
scene
By Peter Harriman
Argus Leader

published: 12/17/00

TIMBER LAKE -- When weary Big Foot Memorial Ride travelers reached this town at dusk, there was hay, water and corrals waiting for horses and soft drinks, food and a warm house for the people.

During the opening cross country trek from the site of Sitting Bull's death to the first water stop at a ranch seven miles away, the riders crossed eight fences and had permission for every one.

The ride unfolds casually. But the journey is a logistical triumph for Jess Knight, of Dupree, who is ramrodding the ride for the first time. Part of this is planning and part is custom. There are veteran hands in this organization who have known their jobs for years.

"They call us Arvol's babies. We'd like to ride, but when they can't find a truck or driver, we end up driving," says Kermit Miner of White horse. Knight can count on Arvol Looking Horse, keeper of the Sacred Pipe and a key figure on the ride, for the work force needed to make the ride go smoothly, and Looking Horse counts on people like Miner.

He trailed the riders during the second half of the day when the route followed a gravel road leading to town here. Behind an aging Ford F 150 loaded in both cab and bed with tools for ranch work, Miner towed a horse trailer and kept an eye out for animals that had played out or been injured. He also kept one hand on the driver's side door, which tended to swing open if he didn't.

"My cousin's truck," Miner explained. "Oh well, I never had a door on my horse. I shouldn't worry about one now."

At the day's conclusion, he hopped into the back of another pickup hauling a horse trailer. In the cold, by the glow of a flashlight, he repaired the plug from the trailer's wiring harness.

It is expected to go this way for the next two weeks, until the ride concludes with ceremonies at the Wounded Knee memorial Dec. 29.

This ride annually follows basically the same course during the two weeks in December between Sitting Bull's death and the Wounded Knee massacre, which helps with organization. But not everyone has done this before.

LaMarr Avery works at the Knight family ranch near Dupree, and he'll join the ride for the first time as cook at Green Grass, Bridger and Interior "just for the enjoyment of it," he says.

He's seen the ride come through for years but until now has never been part of it.

"I made my living in the winter cutting wood," he explains. "A person has to do what he can."

His reprise from that occupation is not without heartache.

"I have cancer. I can't do what I used to do anymore," he says. "But I don't want to get disability. A man who can get around can still do something."

He'll take cooking as it comes. "I'll see what they've got for meat," he says, "and I'll go from there."

Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

Winter ride links descendant of survivors to past
By JOMAY STEEN
Argus Leader

published: 12/17/00

Editor's note: Argus Leader reporter Jomay Steen is an
enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and
a descendant of survivors of the Wounded Knee
massacre.

BRIDGER -- On a cold December night in 1988, after a long day of teaching at Bridger Day School, I had settled in for an evening of correcting math assignments and watching television.

Linda Burrer and I staffed the tiny school in an Indian settlement along the western border of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. We also shared a one-story wooden house across the yard from the two-room school building.

As we sat watching television, there was a knock at the door. I answered it, expecting to see one of the 63 residents of Bridger needing to use the telephone or to borrow cigarettes.

"Is this Bridger?" asked a man of about 25 standing on the bottom step of our front porch. Behind him were five other young American Indian men on horses.

The man held the reins of a cream-colored horse. He was wrapped up in layers of coats and coveralls, kerchiefs and scarves. The horse's head drooped from fatigue.

"Is this Bridger?" he asked again.

The horses had long shaggy coats with eagle feathers tied to their manes. Circles had been painted around the animals' eyes and lightning bolts drawn down their legs. The second man carried an eagle staff and rode with a saddle. Two others rode bareback and were wrapped in blankets.

They had started their trek from Cherry Creek at 4 p.m., following an old Indian trail and later the shoreline of the Cheyenne River before trailing up toward Bridger. Using lights from the school yard as a guide, they arrived at the porch of the Bridger Day School teacherage without knowing where they were and ready to ride deeper into the night if they had miscalculated their location.

They hoped to rest for a day before beginning the next leg of the memorial ride they were completing. The ride, they explained, was to commemorate the route Chief Big Foot and his followers took from the Standing Rock Reservation to their death at Wounded Knee during the winter of 1890.

The sight of the riders that night made real every story I had heard about Bridger. It also brought alive the personal connection I had to the Wounded Knee massacre -- a connection I had just learned about a few years earlier.

I grew up near Faith, about 40 miles northwest of Bridger. I attended Faith High School, in a town bordering the Cheyenne River Reservation. I had never heard of the massacre until "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" made the bestseller's list.

After joining the Bridger staff, I attended monthly school board meetings. While we waited for the principal to arrive from Cherry Creek, about 35 miles away, the school board members would often settle in for storytelling. It was during one of those meetings, that I found out that the hundreds of people shoveled into the mass grave at Wounded Knee weren't the Oglala of Pine Ridge, but members of my tribe and the people of Sitting Bull's band of Hunkpapa's.

Several of those killed, I learned, were my relatives.

Board members Dennis Buffalo, Dorothy Strikes Enemy and Alberta Black Bull would talk about the old community known as Takini, a little west of the present settlement of Bridger.

They told me that takini literally translated means "comes back to life," but is interpreted as "survivor."

This was the place where the survivors of Wounded Knee wintered after fleeing the killing fields 140 miles to the south. They hid in the breaks of the Cheyenne River and eventually found their way north into Cherry Creek and Red Scaffold.

Those who had stayed behind heard of the killings, and every day, they watched the trail that came over the bluff just before disappearing into the cedar brush near Bridger. "Every day they came in -- one or two at a time -- not that many," Dennis Buffalo said.

"And one day," he said, pointing at me. "Your relatives came back, Jomay."

My great-grandparents, Mary Looking For Horses and Carl Kills White, were the only two of their entire family of aunts, uncles, cousins and parents who survived the Wounded Knee massacre. Other families died in that winter's snow, hardly mourned and barely remembered.

Some survivors eventually continued walking to Canada to live with relatives there.

Nearly 100 years later, these young men standing at my back door were covering that same trail, suffering the bitter winds and cold to arrive at Wounded Knee and honor those who had died there and to remember those who didn't make it back.

They were honoring my relatives.

People have asked how I feel; what has changed for me since I found out about my relatives' harsh place in history?

I tell them it angers me when American Indians sometimes literally stand on that Wounded Knee grave site to sell their books, magazine articles and movies. They know it's a powerful place, yet it is still a grave.

I tell them I can't look at museum displays of American Indian children's moccasins, rattles or women's knife sheaths of that era without wondering if they were war prizes stripped from the dead.

But I also tell them how proud I am of the spirit of a people who continued to fight on after unspeakable tragedy by simply living out their lives and keeping their traditions alive.

Today, 110 years later on this barren prairie, the descendants of those brave ancestors hold sun dances and sing the old songs. Some, like those young men on that cold December night, ride to memorialize those who died at Wounded Knee. They are proud of their heritage and they survive -- the true meaning of takini.

Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

Memorial journey demands focus, fortitude from riders
By PETER HARRIMAN
Argus Leader

published: 12/20/00

DUPREE -- A value of any pilgrimage is the discipline and focus required to undertake it.

The Big Foot Memorial riders got a taste of that Tuesday as the two-week ride from Sitting Bull Camp to Wounded Knee completed its fourth leg from Green Grass to here.

Tuesday, the cumulative effort began to take its toll during an 80-mile crossing of country largely cut up into icy and snowy draws that come at the riders as relentlessly as surf.

The ride, which began near Bullhead and winds south to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, commemorates the 180-mile journey Chief Big Foot and his followers took to their death at Wounded Knee 110 years ago.

Fourteen riders circled the grave of Stanley Looking Horse, late keeper of the Lakota Sacred Pipe, at Green Grass and set out Tuesday morning.

Seven straggled into the ranch near Dupree where the horses were corralled for the night. The weary riders plodded along under a winter sunset that gradually changed from pink and gray to peach, then disappeared entirely into evening as the pace of the horses slowed to a tired walk.

They had climbed out of the low rangeland surrounding Green Grass in the morning, trotting and loping to the flat, agricultural land above. In a way, the ride seemed to leap forward from the traditional 19th century Lakota homeland to contemporary South Dakota.

Nature's tossed and wild landscape gave way to the orderly hand of agriculture. The riders spent much of the afternoon traversing hayfields. Mounds of huge round bales on the horizon replaced the natural land forms that had provided the vista for the first three legs of the ride.

A good part of the day was spent navigating, since none of the leaders seemed entirely sure of the route. The uncertainty seemed to wear on the group.

Ron McNeil, president of Sitting Bull College in North Dakota and a great-great-great-grandson of Sitting Bull, upbraided several young riders for being slow to help two companions open a balky gate, and he warned them to keep their horses reined behind the three honor staffs that now accompany the group.

By the time the riders crossed a gravel road where the caravan of horse trailers in support could get to them, tired horses began to drop out one after the other.

At the conclusion, as the group circled up for their traditional prayer, Arvol Looking Horse, current keeper of the Sacred Pipe, told them that in an endeavor such as this, they would be tested. They must help each other, he said.

"Let's make this a good ride," he told them. "No accidents."

Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

Ride through open prairie ends with basketball
By PETER HARRIMAN
Argus Leader

published: 12/21/00

CHERRY CREEK -- The fifth leg of the Big Foot Memorial Ride on Wednesday took participants across a vast sweep of open, uplifting country for most of the day, then deposited them finally in a grim little community that seems to be fighting a desperate, losing battle with privation.

The group, which embarked on this journey Dec. 15 near Bullhead and will wind south to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, is commemorating the 180-mile journey Chief Big Foot and his followers took to their death at Wounded Knee 110 years ago.

Almost from the moment Wednesday morning when they left Diane Jensen's ranch near Dupree, where they had spent the night before, the 14 riders found themselves outlined against infinite vistas of gray horizon and huge swells of prairie.

They then traversed country that challenged the vehicles accompanying them on a dirt road winding through the steep hills.

The end of a long day concluded in Cherry Creek, where the riders plodded past low clusters of tribal housing and mobile homes and where a motley assortment of dogs swirled around the fringes of the mounted group.

The ride proceeded past a decrepit mattress leaning at a slant in the bed of a worn white pickup. Standing sentry at a door nearby was a moribund white washing machine missing a front panel.

The only people who took any notice of the passing scene were several small children who stood on the porch of a mobile home to watch the riders go by.

Still, the lights of Christmas trees glinted from the occasional window. Strings of colored lights outlined a few eaves and doorways. Someone had even been moved to frost a couple of adjoining windows with the image of a snowman and the message, "Merry Xmas."

The Big Foot Memorial Riders stayed at Cherry Creek's community center, which featured a basketball court of white synthetic tile surrounded by a few rows of blue bleachers. There was a kitchen, too, with a worn range that sent an indescribable stink percolating through the building moments after it was fired up to deal with the ubiquitous coffee pot and the cauldron of soup for the evening meal.

But perhaps the spirit that prompted at least some in Cherry Creek to fly against their mean surroundings and decorate for the holidays graces this ride, too.

No sooner were the horses turned out into a corral at the rodeo grounds, and the gear hauled to the community center, than the kids on this ride managed to find several threadbare basketballs.

The games began.
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

Religion of hope ended in tragedy at Wounded Knee
By MARTY TWO BULLS
Argus Leader

published: 12/22/00

The 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee -- where more than 250 Lakota men, women and children were gunned down by soldiers on the South Dakota prairie -- likely had its beginning a year earlier when Lakota scouts returned from Nevada with the teachings of an obscure Paiute Indian named Wovoka.

Two of the scouts, minor Lakota chiefs Kicking Bear and Short Bull, spread the gospel as told by Wovoka, acting as Ghost Dance disciples among the Lakota.

Wovoka was the son of a shaman named Tavibo, who first practiced a strange religion called the "Ghost Dance" in the 1870s.

After Tavibo died, Wovoka was expected to carry on his father's work. But he turned his back on Indian teachings and instead learned the way of the white man. Wovoka went to work as a hired hand for ranchers David and Mary Wilson of Mason Valley, Nev.

They had taught him to read, write and introduced him to Christianity. He read miraculous stories of Jesus healing the sick and learned that the greatest teacher on earth was the son of God. Wovoka was so impressed with the Wilsons that he took their last name as his own. And for the next decade, he became Jack Wilson.

But the young man eventually tired of ranch life and moved northwest into Oregon and Washington, gathering crops with other migrating Indians. In the 1880s, he encountered Skokomish Indians who followed the prophet John Slocum, practicing a new religion called the "Shakers."

Slocum advocated abstinence from all vices, and he urged Indians to move away from traditional religious teachings. But Slocum's teachings eroded the power base of medicine men and disrupted the delicate Skokomish unity. The Shakers used bells and candles in their rituals and worked themselves into fits of ceremonial trembling -- hence their name.

One of the original Shaker converts, Louis Yowaluck, started a new sect called the "Blowers." This group practiced some of the same rites as the Shakers, but when they greeted a stranger, they blew on him and waved in an effort to chase away evil. Both Shakers and Blowers predicted the second coming of Christ and the end of the world.

Wilson moved among both groups. Later, he was influenced by Smohalla, a religious leader of the Wanapum Indians in the Columbia Basin of Washington state. Smohalla's group was known as the "Dreamers," who believed that learning was found in dreaming, not in work.

Smohalla explained it this way: "My young men shall never work. Men who work cannot dream; and wisdom comes to us in dreams. You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's breast?

"Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again.

"You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut off my mother's hair."

Imbued with these experiences, Jack Wilson returned to his tribe in Nevada and reached back to his father's Ghost Dance teachings. Wilson became Wovoka, the Messiah.

Beginning of the End

Years after the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn, where the Sioux and the Cheyenne annihilated Gen. George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry on the plains of Montana, marked the beginning of the end for the Lakota.

Although it was the greatest victory of all time for the Indians, the American public was outraged by the defeat of Custer, a Civil War hero.

Congress passed additional spending for the long-neglected military. The Indian problem must be solved one way or another.

Indians who had not already surrendered to reservation agents were on the move, harried by federal troops. Crazy Horse, who led the decisive charge at Little Bighorn, was killed after he surrendered at Fort Robinson, Neb. Red Cloud took charge of the Oglalas and settled on Pine Ridge. Sitting Bull fled north to Canada.

Meanwhile, the great buffalo herds were being hunted into extinction. The long-range modern rifle made it possible to kill large groups of animals without spooking them into a stampede.

Bison by nature are not afraid of any animal, including humans. This allowed hunters to get in range with their rifles and kill all day.

Buffalo Bill Cody earned his name by killing 4,280 buffalo for the Kansas Pacific Railroad during an 18-month period.

The Indians, who had built their culture around the buffalo, were puzzled by the slaughter. They were sickened that animals were skinned and left to rot. And when the great herds were gone, their bones were collected and sold for fertilizer.

Mountains of bones passed through the rail yards, which years before were crowded with stacks of buffalo hides ready for shipment.

Traditional hunting grounds stood empty, marked by fences, plowed fields and iron rails.

A culture was ending. Starving bands of Indians were forced onto the reservations, relying on government rations to feed their families.

Sitting Bull, a prophet among the Indian people, eventually returned to the reservations with his followers. The chief became a friend of Cody, who started his famous Wild West Show after the buffalo were gone. Sitting Bull accompanied Cody on a European tour and became a celebrity in his own right.

Solar eclipse

By 1889, Wovoka frequently fell down "dead," explaining to followers when he jumped up that he had mysteriously returned to life. The act was not dramatic enough to convince the people, though, and Wovoka decided to revive his father's "spirit dance."

Wovoka needed a miracle. He found it in the Farmer's Almanac -- a solar eclipse.

Wovoka "died" in Nevada during the 1889 blackout. As the shadow passed and the sun again lit the desert, Wovoka came back to life, explaining that he spent the time in darkness with God.

The rare eclipse stunned the Lakota. The sun was blacked out and reborn. It was seen as a message from God. And he even mailed a letter to all Indian leaders in the territory, signed by Jack Wilson.

Please come to Mason Valley, Nevada, it read. Meet the Messiah.

Kicking Bear and his brother-in-law Short Bull, with three other Lakota delegates, were dispatched to Nevada by a council of chiefs that included Big Foot.

Delegates from many tribes were sent to the desert, but many more ignored the invitation. Some of those present doubted Wovoka and did not decline to say so.

The alleged Messiah's claimed that he was the son of God, who many years ago had come to the white man (presumably as Jesus) but they nailed him to the cross and killed him.

Wovoka appeared to have been wounded in the hands and feet. He implored delegates to return to their tribes and live in peace with the white man. For the end of the world was coming, the dead would rise and the evil would be judged. The faithful needed only to wear curtain garments, dance and sing his praise.

Because all Indians spoke different dialects, some left Wovoka with different interpretations. The Kicking Bear delegation returned to South Dakota convinced that the dead would rise, the bison would return and the red man would be spared God's wrath. The white man would descend into hell. The faithful needed only to wear the shirt or dress of the Ghost Dance.

Sitting Bull

With game scarce and buffalo gone, the Lakota were ready for a message of hope in the summer of 1890. They began to dance. But white settlers were alarmed by the spread of the strange religion, fearing an Indian uprising.

Urgent letters were sent to the Secretary of War for the Army to control the Ghost Dance craze. James McLaughlin, Indian Agent in Fort Yates, N.D., mistakenly singled out Sitting Bull as the leader and alleged Messiah of the movement. McLaughlin lobbied for Sitting Bull's arrest, asserting that with Sitting Bull gone the movement would end.

The truth is that Sitting Bull was never an advocate of the Ghost Dance. But neither did he discourage it. Buffalo Bill Cody successfully pled Sitting Bull's case and the Army allowed Cody to seek out the medicine man and safely bring him in.

Yet McLaughlin, for reasons of his own, delayed Cody until he could convince the Army to rescind its orders. Cody was called off.

Then, on the morning of Dec 15, 1890, near what is now Bullhead, S.D., Indian police officers led by Lt. Bull Head attempted to arrest Sitting Bull and a gun fight erupted. Sitting Bull was shot dead.

Bull Head and five of his officers also were killed, along with seven of Sitting Bull's followers. The Indian police fought off what was left of Sitting Bull's clan until an Army troop arrived.

Sitting Bull's body was placed in a wagon -- with other victims piled on top -- and taken to Fort Yates, where it would buried without ceremony.

At first the tribal officers were triumphant, but they later wallowed in remorse. Little Eagle, a seasoned tribal police officer, was heard to say: "Well, we killed our chief."

Panic sets in

Settlers at first heralded Sitting Bull's death, but panic soon followed with talk that warriors would avenge the death of their chief.

"The country round about is terribly wrought up over the death of Sitting Bull," the Argus Leader reported Dec. 17, 1890. "Instead of creating an easy feeling it has aroused much apprehension. It is feared that many families will fall victims to the vengeance of his followers ... An enterprising Bismarck merchant yesterday offered $1,000 for Sitting Bull's hide."

On the orders of President Benjamin Harrison, troop strength in South Dakota had been building since early November. Gen. Nelson A. Miles arrived in Rapid City on Dec. 17. The Army was poised to act.

Big Foot

Big Foot was the chief of the Minneconjous in central South Dakota and had allowed his people to participate in the Ghost Dance. His niece, Woodpecker Woman, was the wife of Kicking Bear, who had spread the religion among the Lakota.

When Big Foot learned of Sitting Bull's death, he was already enroute with his followers to Fort Bennett near Pierre to collect rations.

He was intercepted by Lt. Col. Edwin V. Sumner of the U.S. Army's 8th Cavalry and agreed to surrender.

But a civilian, John Dunn, later urged Big Foot and his band to go to Pine Ridge and during the night, Big Foot and his people quietly slipped out of the village, eluding the soldiers.

Their intention was to join Chief Red Cloud, who wanted to make peace with the U.S. Army.

On Dec. 28, Maj. Samuel M. Whitside of the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry intercepted Big Foot's band at Porcupine Butte. Whitside escorted the group under a white flag to a military camp near Wounded Knee Creek.

The following morning, Col. James W. Forsyth of the 7th Cavalry ordered Big Foot's followers to surrender their guns. While soldiers searched the village for weapons, a shot was fired. Warriors and soldiers began hand-to-hand combat, and minutes later the stunned families fled.

Most ran west into a dry ravine where they were gunned down by Hotchkiss cannons. By midafternoon, it was over. Twenty-five soldiers and more than 250 Lakota men, women and children lay dead.

A sudden blizzard momentarily hid the carnage. But on Jan. 4, the Army returned to bury the Indians left on the open prairie. Snow had drifted behind the twisted remains of Chief Big Foot's band of refugees, some with faces aimed skyward in impossible contortions.

Corpses of prominent tribal members were propped up for the photographer, the rest stacked like cordwood for a hasty burial.

What began as a hope for a desperate people ended in the mud at Wounded Knee.

Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

Young Lakota riders draw strength from history
By PETER HARRIMAN
Argus Leader

published: 12/22/00

BRIDGER -- The shortest day of the year stretched on interminably.

On the winter solstice, the Big Foot Memorial Riders trotted out of Cherry Creek at 10:30 a.m. and headed for the rim of the Cheyenne River Canyon. Nearly seven hours later, a line of horses with icy coats emerged from the darkness, lit by the glow of the street light outside the Bridger community building.

Vehicle headlights merged into a tiny Milky Way that trailed the tired troupe to a corral at the community park. In their glare, many hands helped take care of the horses this night. Because, for the most part, those still mounted at the end of the day were kids.

They were matter of fact about the experience, too. "Nothing happened," Brandon Bagala, 13, reported.

"It wasn't too bad," his friend C.J. Myner,13, added.

Kellyn Hill, 12, was the most effusive.

"It was cold," he said. "Hard on the legs."

Seeing those youngsters jog out of the night, hours overdue, a thought emerges about this ride from Sitting Bull Camp, down the length of South Dakota to Wounded Knee.

This ain't Little League.

One hundred and ten years ago, Indian mystics told of a dying earth that would be reborn rich with bison, ponies and the generations of Indians who had died. It would be a place inaccessible to whites, who had despoiled the existing earth.

Wednesday night, the riders stopped at Cherry Creek, a key site of this Ghost Dance religion that had precipitated tragedy for their ancestors. They looked like death stirred into motion, as though they themselves might be the necessary precursor to the promised rebirth.

In 1889, Kicking Bear and Short Bull, Lakota emissaries from the South Dakota reservations, had brought the Ghost Dance to the Northern Plains from Nevada. It had been revealed in a vision to a Paiute shaman there, Wovoka. The Ghost Dance was poorly understood by some whites, who considered it a call for Indians who had been subjugated for nearly a decade to aid the rebirth by renewing war against the United States.

The dance took root among Lakotas whose own view of the future was as barren as the ravaged terrain over which the Big Foot riders now travel.

In a Prayer Circle in the Bridger Community Building Thursday night, before a dinner of soup and sandwiches, Hill's father Manaja Unjinca Hill offered some thoughts about the trip that commemorates the two weeks between Sitting Bull's death and the Wounded Knee Massacre.

"I want to thank the riders for making this long journey, it was cold out there, I want to thank them for that," Hill said.

The children had traveled 20 miles in temperatures that hung around zero. In contrast to earlier days of the modern journey, there had been sun and little wind, but the cold still offered lessons.

"This is what our ancestors did. Our young ones have lots to learn," Hill said. "It's all good. Everything that comes out of this ride is good."

The riders make this trek both to commemorate the deaths at Wounded Knee and to celebrate rebirth of Lakota culture. The children experiencing this journey are part of that.

The historic journey

The Lakota, by about 1881, had lost a war to retain their traditional way of life as nomadic bison hunters, when followers of the most recalcitrant holdout, Sitting Bull, began drifting back south across the Canadian border towards reservation life in the United States when bison herds played out.

Rations promised them in treaties they signed with the United States after they were defeated were never delivered. Following several summers of drought, starvation loomed for many. The Ghost Dance promise of delivery from this misery was enticing.

But fear of the Ghost Dance among whites let to a botched arrest of the Lakotas' own great leader and mystic Sitting Bull Dec. 15, 1890. It resulted in him being slain by Standing Rock tribal police.

About 400 Lakota, led by the aged and ill Big Foot and fearing that Sitting Bull's death put them all in jeopardy, fled towards the Badlands in hopes of finding sanctuary among Ghost Dancers there.

They were intercepted by the U.S. Army, however, and surrendered. Escorted to Wounded Knee Creek, more than 250 were massacred there Dec. 29, 1890 when an attempt to disarm them resulted in a shot being fired. The soldiers, including some from the 7th Cavalry who had lost comrades 14-years earlier in the Battle of Little Bighorn, turned small arms and artillery fire on the camp. Then they fired on fleeing women and children.

Today's connections

Cherry Creek, Bridger and the land around them hold as much history as the beginning and ending points of this 180-mile journey

This is where Big Foot learned of Sitting Bull's death and welcomed the members of his band. This is where survivors of the massacre came to winter, hiding in the breaks of the Cheyenne River until eventually making their way north. West of the present town is a site called Takini, which means "comes back to life."

And this is where, each year, the memorial ride expands as participants come from Pine Ridge

Reservation in the south to join those who began the ride a week earlier on Standing Rock Reservation in the north.

It was unclear Thursday how many new riders will join the 14 who began on Dec. 15, but a trailer of steel corral panels sat in the community center's parking lot, left earlier to prepare for additional horses. Friday is a rest day for the travelers, who will take another week to reach Wounded Knee on the Dec. 29 anniversary.

Riders say what began as a way to commemorate one of the most tragic events in Lakota history is now a ritual of strength for them.

Karen Duchenaux made her first ride at age 16 and is now on her eleventh trip. When cold and wind are daunting, she said, riders think back to the original journey and the people who made it.

"Here. you've got a good horse that you know will make it and if not, there's a trailer behind you," she said. "You're not in any danger. Who am I to be complaining?"

She said the ride will teach the young people important lessons. "The things you learn about yourself, how strong you are, are invaluable in real life," she said. "The things you learn on this ride stay with you forever."
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

By PETER HARRIMAN
              Argus Leader
http://www.argusleader.com/news/Saturdayarticle6.shtml
              published: 12/23/00

          BRIDGER -- Halfway through the Big Foot Memorial Ride, horsemen and supporters paused here Friday for the big push to the finish at Wounded Knee.

The ride commemorates the flight of Chief Big Foot and approximately 400 followers to the Badlands after Sitting Bull was killed in a botched arrest attempt at Standing Rock Reservation on Dec. 15, 1890.

Big Foot's group was intercepted by the U.S. Army Dec. 28, and nearly 300 were slaughtered Dec. 29 when the Seventh Calvary poured small arms and artillery fire into the Indian's camp. Then they turned the guns on survivors who were attempting to flee.

In the past decade, besides memorializing this tragedy, the 180-mile ride has become a means for Lakota men and women determined to strengthen their heritage, to pass on lessons about their history and way of life to young riders who are accompanying the adults.

Friday, the Bridger Community Building rang constantly with the shouts of those children, who seemed to be in perpetual motion throughout the day.

By nightfall, floor space in the center was nearly filled with bedrolls dropped off during the day for new riders. They will swell the ranks of the original eight who started out at Sitting Bull Camp Dec. 15.

A portable corral outside the community building holds about a dozen new horses.

Bridger is the traditional joining point on the route for riders from Pine Ridge Reservation to join those who began the journey at Standing Rock.

Today, the group sets forth on the longest leg of the journey from Bridger to Cottonwood, a ride of about 40 miles.
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law.

Riders remember, honor culture on trek's longest day
By PETER HARRIMAN
Argus Leader
published: 12/24/00

COTTONWOOD -- The Grindstone Hall is the size of a large suburban basement. Saturday it was carpeted with bedrolls as the 50 people who now make up the Big Foot Memorial Ride participants and support staff packed into the place after a 40-mile day on the trail.

Thirty-seven riders, including those who began at Sitting Bull Camp on Dec. 15 and more than 30 who arrived at the Bridger Community Hall late Friday, began their day Saturday morning with a purpose beyond merely covering miles.

Saturday's segment was the longest of the two-week journey. Danny Afraid Of Hawk told the circled riders before they set out that their trek, from the site of Sitting Bull's death to the Wounded Knee Massacre memorial, was in honor of the Lakota culture.

The riders spent the morning climbing their way out of the Cheyenne River breaks. After a stop for lunch at the abandoned Dowling Community Church, they pressed on toward the evening's camp at the Grindstone Hall, arriving at dusk.

At the end of the day in this tiny hall, Cork Last Horse, a rider from Kyle, gave the group a soliloquy on their culture.

He stood in the midst of young and old tucked into their sleeping bags and offered thoughts ranging from the need to respect the horses that are carrying the riders more than 200 miles across snowy South Dakota to honoring the future of the Lakota people.

"By 2013 it was foretold that the Lakotas would be wiped out ... but we still have with us these little boys and girls here on the ride," he said.

"By then they will be about my age, and we can sit and listen to them talk. That's why we're riding today. This is your way of life. Be a Lakota. Be proud of it. This isn't just a ride. It is remembering."

'This might be the last ride'
By PETER HARRIMAN
Argus Leader

published: 12/25/00

INTERIOR -- On the table in the Bridger Community Building, Clementine Day lays out two important pieces of family history.

One is a cardboard-bound ledger from 1912. In it are entries from her great-great-grandfather, John Makes It Long. Most are letters on behalf of the Big Foot Survivors Association to the U.S. Congress seeking recovery of damages for the Wounded Knee Massacre. She has never shown this in public, Day says, but the time seems right.

The other document is a newspaper clipping, a short story about U.S. Army Lt. Col. Earl Knight. He's the second Native American and the first Sioux to graduate from West Point Military Academy. He's also Day's son.

In the Community Building, packed with piles of saddles and bedrolls and alive with children, a drum group from Red Scaffold and Bridger and Big Foot Memorial Riders and their supporters, the arc of Day's family history seems typical of the way many on this ride approach the massacre.

The precursor to the memorial ride, from 1986 to 1989, was done from Bridger to the Wounded Knee Memorial in accordance with Oglala medicine man Curtis Kills Ree's vision to release the spirits of the Wounded Knee victims and to complete the cycle of grieving for them.

That has been done.

For the past decade, the ride has become a means to renew Lakota heritage, especially among young riders. This year's memorial ride, on the 110th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre, comes in the 10th year of that cultural revival.

"They say this might be the last ride," says Vina White Hawk of Manderson, the only woman on the original ride in 1986. "The new generation of riders -- we have that, and they've remembered for 10 years. What's next?"

White Hawk had expected other women to be on that initial ride, but when she found she was the only one, "it was too late to turn back."

These days, the riders mostly stay indoors in places such as the Bridger Community Building. But White Hawk, who also rode in 1989, remembers that when the Lakota first did this, they camped outdoors.

"The first ride was a lot more spiritual," she says. "It would just make you cry."

But while the ghosts of Wounded Knee may not loom as darkly over the riders now, the massacre is not forgotten. In Day's family ledger is a description of Wounded Knee written by Makes It Long, who was employed as an Indian scout for the U.S. Army at the time of the massacre. In a flowing, ornate hand, he penned a terse account for Congress, tightly focused on the loss of property the survivors sustained. But images of cold-blooded tragedy still find their way into the narrative.

"The officer on the knoll was heard to give an order at which the soldiers dropped their arms and threw in a shell," he wrote. "A second order to fire was given by the same officer, which was distinctly heard by an English-speaking Indian named Joe Horn Cloud."

Forgive, move on

Day says she never read the ledger until she was 24. The death of approximately 300 mostly unarmed Indians at the hands of the U.S. Army was not ignored in her family, but neither was it dwelt on.

"My dad was a lay minister," she says. "He said I must have forgiveness in my heart and move on. What happened has happened."

In many ways, Day's relationship with the Wounded Knee Massacre parallels that of Jess Knight, who is organizing and managing this year's ride. He had an ancestor killed at Wounded Knee and says that growing up, he remembers his grandmother acknowledging this but never speaking about it beyond that.

It was treated more as history than as tragedy.

Knight, like Day, has a son in the military, a second-year student at the U.S. Air Force Academy. For Knight, a 23-year rodeo veteran and head of the Dupree School Lakota Club, the most important aspects of this ride are the opportunity to stimulate cultural and spiritual ties -- and the chance to spend days on a horse.

"This fits me. The more things I can do to stay on a horse, I will," he says. "Horses help people with emotional problems. There's lots of healing. Things get OK after I'm around my horses."

Dana Dupris grew up on a ranch near Eagle Butte. Throughout this ride, he has been using animals to pass on lessons about life to children on the ride, including the seven from Eagle Butte he has direct charge of.

A story about a job shepherding in his youth ends with the point that money earned is more valuable than money simply given.

Complaints about kicking horses become invitations for young riders to look to their own behavior. Horses emulate riders, he says.

Dupris is a general asset to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. He has toured federal museums, cataloging Native American artifacts that should be returned as part of graves' repatriation.

With "our little cattle and horse business," he offers pleasure rides and miniature roundups "to people who come out here and help the tribe and want to experience a ride. They ask what it costs. We tell them just a word of thanks." He also brought seven horses on the ride.

Tall, quiet, patient, Dupris manages to look bookish in tan coveralls and coat with a black wool stocking cap and gold-rimmed glasses.

"The one thing missing from this ride is, they told us at the organizational meeting there would be a lot of oral history passed on around the campfire," he says. "That's kind of what these children are looking for, to learn firsthand."

Safe for children

Dupris has six children of his own, ages 5 to 25, but he often plays host to many more, he says.

"A lot of children come for the weekend or the summer. We usually have a house full of kids. Lots of times this is a safe haven for them. There's lots of alcoholism. Some of these kids don't want to go home or be home. For them, this ride is a good, safe environment, even though it's cold and hard."

In the early days of this event, the pace varied as groups of riders would lope ahead or straggle behind. But since approximately 30 Oglalas joined at Bridger, the pace has been lined out into a ground-eating fast walk that horses can sustain for hours until dusk overtakes the group at the end of the day.

After an early start Christmas Eve, the riders made about 25 miles into the northern units of the Badlands. They'll wake up this morning in the Interior gym, and the highlight of Christmas Day will be crossing Big Foot Pass.

Christmas on the ride

This event puts a different spin on a holiday that has become the country's primary retail event. Being out on the trail for Christmas is no great hardship for Knight, who says as a boy he never made it home for the holiday from boarding school in Chamberlain.

"For my family, it's tough," he acknowledges. His wife, two sons and daughter "don't understand why we're not going to have Christmas. I explained to them this is to help the youth. They'll come on the ride for the day. My kids love to go on rides."

Dupris says his family also may come out for the day if they can find him.

"I haven't learned the route yet."

A quiet Christmas, however, would hearken back to those of his youth, when a trip to town was a biweekly instead of twice-daily affair.

"To us, Christmas is very simple," Dupris says. "There were not many gifts. A spokesman would tell the story of Christmas. There would be songs and sacks of candy. It was just the idea of spending time together back then."

White Hawk's family in Manderson also will miss her on Christmas Day. But White Hawk says that, for her, the holiday "is more a spiritual thing for me than giving presents."

A continued theme of this ride -- put forth daily by the elders and spiritual leaders who have set the riders off each morning and welcomed them at the end of the day as they plodded into some ranch yard or corral -- is that the daily trek is an opportunity to pray for the horses, for the riders' friends, for themselves.

"We can pray for peace, too," White Hawk says. "I think that's kind of what Christmas is about: Peace on earth."

Journey returns history to family
By JOMAY STEEN
Argus Leader

published: 12/25/00

CHERRY CREEK -- Growing up on the Cheyenne River Reservation, Anita Washburn didn't learn much about the Wounded Knee massacre.

"When I asked my mother about why we never talked about Wounded Knee, she said it was something they always kept hush-hush," Washburn, 48, says. "It was because it divided families."

It was only as an adult that she discovered how her ancestors had fought to keep their Cherry Creek neighbors from joining Big Foot on his march to meet Red Cloud in 1890. Other relatives joined his band and died at Wounded Knee, while some escaped and returned to Cherry Creek.

She hopes the 180-mile ride commemorating Big Foot's journey will unite her family. This weekend, her 16-year-old daughter, Cherie, and 21-year-old daughter, Crystal, are joining the riders retracing the route Big Foot's followers took to Wounded Knee. They hope to better understand how the event hurt their family. Washburn's 23-year-old son Quanah also is riding.

The Washburn family has lived about three miles northwest of Cherry Creek for decades. Anita Washburn's family are descendants of Blue Arm, a survivor of the Wounded Knee shootings.

But they also are related to the LeClaire and Straight Head families, both of whom argued fiercely in 1890 to persuade their neighbors not to go with Big Foot's band and to stay in Cherry Creek that winter instead. Brown Thunder, leader of the Wankiyagi band, had convinced a number of families to brave the bitter weather to seek help from Red Cloud, whose camp was near Pine Ridge. In a time when most Indian families had made winter camps, settling into the sheltered draws along Cherry Creek, the journey caused dissension.

The U.S. Army intercepted the group en route to Red Cloud's camp and marched them to Wounded Knee. Most of Anita Washburn's relatives who went to Wounded Knee never returned. And those who stayed in Cherry Creek found it easier not to dwell on the losses.

"I have always thought that the people of Pine Ridge embrace the ride much more than we on Cheyenne River do," she says.

But, in 1988, Anita Washburn learned more about the legacy her family shared with the Hunkpapas and the Oglalas of Standing Rock and Pine Ridge after her son, then 11, joined the Memorial Ride.

"We had almost forgotten our people. We didn't have the memory," she says.

Her son's experience on horseback that year brought back to her husband, Rhae, and their family, stories and memories of a people who struggled, endured and survived, she said.

"What happened was a tragedy. It's something not to dwell on, but to honor," Anita Washburn says. "This ride brought this history back to us, and my children are learning about their culture and ceremonies."

Siblings ride

The Washburn children are eager to learn.

At the age of 11, Quanah Washburn begged his parents to let him take part in the memorial rides designed to mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre.

Ten years later, his sister, Crystal, will take part in the ride.

"I've gone to a sweat every chance I get," Crystal Washburn says. "Spiritually, I'm ready for it. But physically -- I think I'm going to have a tough time."

Winter weather, limited daylight and long hours riding in a saddle await the Washburn children, but Crystal takes it in stride.

"It'll be a lot easier for us than it was for them," Crystal Washburn says of her ancestors. "The cold is the worst thing I'm thinking about."

Neither sister has spent more than a few days riding at a time, never for any long periods during the winter.

"I just hope to finish the ride, and I think I will," Crystal Washburn says.

Anita and Rhae Washburn will follow their children in a car loaded with provisions for the trip.

For Crystal Washburn, riding will be the realization of a 10-year-old goal to push herself as hard as her ancestors did.

"Some people think you're going to be missing Christmas, but I'd rather be there than here on Christmas morning," she says. "The only thing that would stop me is my horse giving up."

Quanah's first year

Quanah Washburn, now 23, also lives in Cherry Creek. As a child, he heard stories about the first Big Foot Memorial Ride from family friend Mervin Hill. Hill and his friend Rocky Afraid of Hawk were among the 19 riders who left from nearby Bridger in the darkness, re-enacting the flight of the two bands of American Indians trying to find help from Chief Red Cloud at Pine Ridge.

"Everyone just pulled in, unloaded their horses and headed out," said Pam Afraid of Hawk, Rocky's wife.

The riders didn't know each other and couldn't see each other's faces, she said.

They slept beneath the stars, beside blazing fires, shivering themselves to sleep.

During the summer months of 1988, Quanah Washburn had practically lived on a horse. He was determined to ride beyond the confines of Cherry Creek and sleep beside the bonfires beneath the winter sky. He knew he could do it.

"I just wanted to go," he said.

His parents listened to his requests but were reluctant to let the young boy go off on such a ride.

With Rhae Washburn, 49, working at the Cherry Creek Day School and Anita teaching at the Cherry Creek Headstart, they were running full-tilt into Christmas with decorating, programs and church services filling their schedules. Yet Quanah persisted.

"We didn't even have a horse back then," said Anita Washburn.

One afternoon, Quanah asked his father to take him to Bridger that Saturday so he could catch a ride with one of his uncles. Rhae Washburn made a deal with his son. He would take Quanah to Bridger, but the boy would have to put together his own horse, bridle and saddle. The family then went to Pierre to buy boots, blankets and a new coat.

Fasting riders

Anita Washburn remembers packing clean underwear, socks, snacks and pop in Quanah's saddlebags -- things he never used.

"He told us that he didn't want to eat in front of the people who were fasting," she said. "A lot of the other boys didn't have a change of clothing or snacks, and he chose to go without."

Each year of the memorial ride, the riders pray for a select group -- the elders, the children, women, people who were incarcerated or the earth. To honor each morning prayer, some of the riders chose to fast while they rode and remember those who had lived without food or shelter, but with hope.

"It was meant to be," said Anita Washburn of Quanah's participation. "When the horses were so tired from carrying the other riders, they'd put Quanah on them so they wouldn't have to carry so much weight.

The children and youths rode in the back of the group as the scouts went up ahead to find the trail. On the nice days, the trail was muddy, and the horses would skid and slide down the hills. The young boys would race each other or chase after the horses that got away.

"A lot of people fell off, so we had to catch their horses," Quanah Washburn recalled.

Scouts trailed behind the group as well to make sure everyone kept up. If the riders fell behind schedule, the support crew would drive to a high hill and shine car lights out into the night. The riders would then run their horses toward the light, keeping the riders and horses warm.

On the second day of the ride, weather hit subzero temperatures, and the wind picked up. The horse's body heat kept Quanah warm a while, but the thin boy soon faltered because of the hours spent in the freezing weather.

"I was so cold that I fainted," he said. "It was the only time I was sick in all the years I rode."

Rocky Afraid of Hawk saw the boy fall and picked him up. His wife drove Quanah to the next camp to wait for his parents to arrive.

"The first year Quanah rode, I couldn't understand how they made it. They were really committed," said Rhae Washburn. Some of the first-time riders arrived at Bridger wearing little more than their coats and tennis shoes. They had no idea where they were going except down around Wounded Knee, he said.

"It just amazed me," Rhae Washburn said.

He followed the progression of the ride, carrying gear and making sure his son's bedroll had been spread close to the fire or in a comfortable place. He also helped Quanah tend to his horse. After they said prayers, the riders fed, watered and wiped down their horses. If there was food, they ate. If not, Quanah fell into his bedroll and was instantly asleep, Rhae Washburn said.

1990's bitter cold

Rhae Washburn said that "1990 was the worst winter. They got to Porcupine Butte, and it was so bad that frost covered the horse's face and icicles hung from its chin."

It was the only year Quanah Washburn considered quitting, but his father urged him to continue the two-mile trek to Wounded Knee. "Down around Pine Ridge, we used to sit on the bluff waiting for them," he recalled.

Long before the riders came into sight, Rhae and Anita Washburn could hear horses breaking through the snow as they trailed closer to the mass grave site. Waiting for his son and friends, Rhae would reflect on why they were out there.

"It makes you think, we have these modern conveniences," he said. "They must have froze."

Anita Washburn remembers driving between campsites and her home to make Christmas happen for her younger children. She recalls the people they met and sheltered. She was there when Quanah received his Indian name -- Luta Wambli -- for accomplishing the ride.

She also remembers Quanah's answer when she asked him why he did it.

Why did her son put himself through such extremes when he could have been home during Christmas?

"I asked him, 'Sonny, why did you go on that ride?' " said Anita Washburn, her eyes welling with tears of pride. "He told me, 'I rode for those people who died long ago.' "

Warm coffee on trail replaces glitter of Christmas
By PETER HARRIMAN
Argus Leader

published: 12/26/00

KYLE -- At 4 a.m., a light snow sifted from the still, black sky over the campfire.

Flames threw sharp shadows on four faces already weathered as craggy as the nearby Badlands. A blue enamel coffee pot on the edge of the fire spiced the cold air with its heavy aroma.

It's Christmas morning on the Big Foot Memorial Ride.

Plans to spend Christmas Eve at the school gym in Interior fell through, so most of the nearly 40 riders and their support personnel scattered from the camp on a ranch on the north edge of the Badlands to seek other accommodations.

A handful of people stayed with the horses, however, bunking in a wall tent, a recreational vehicle and a couple of horse trailers.

The early risers warmed themselves at the fire before beginning the daily chores of feeding horses, catching them, and saddling them before the main group returned to camp in time for a breakfast of bacon and hard-boiled eggs.

Kermit Miner of White Horse shook hands around the campfire and wished everyone a merry Christmas.

Eli Tail Sr. of Porcupine remarked about the irony of fighting in the Middle East that caused the postponement of Christmas in the land where it began.

Tail brought three grandchildren who want to join the ride to the Christmas Eve camp.

"I took them out here to see how it is," he said.

The approximately 180-mile ride commemorates the flight of Chief Big Foot and approximately 400 followers to the Badlands after Sitting Bull was killed in a botched arrest attempt at Standing Rock Reservation on Dec. 15, 1890.

It will end Friday in Wounded Knee on the 110th anniversary of the massacre of Big Foot and nearly 300 of those travelers.

The Christmas day path took the group over Big Foot Pass and through the Badlands to Kyle.

About 10:30 a.m., after 15 minutes of riding, two scouts appeared on the ridge line above the pass. They seemed to hang on the horizon, waiting for a dramatic moment to build.

Then riders carrying a half-dozen honor staffs appeared, and the scouts started around a knoll down a steep pitch and onto a finger ridge that curled down to the highway below. The staff bearers followed, then a long line of riders in single file.

About a dozen cars, trucks and RVs parked along the road, and people with cameras dotted the roadside and nearby hilltops, watching the line of horsemen wind its way through the domed Badlands formations powdered white with snow.

A horse slipped and dumped a rider, but both were quickly back on their feet and continuing, accompanied by hoots of laughter from trailing riders.

The wind was still, the blue sky glorious. The holiday festivities might have been understated, but the Big Foot riders had a Christmas ride to remember.

The group will rest in Kyle today, then push on to reach the Wounded Knee memorial.

Big Foot ride's spiritual side wanes, some contend
By PETER HARRIMAN
Argus Leader

published: 12/27/00

KYLE -- The Big Foot Memorial Ride in the past decade has evolved largely into an event to bring Lakota youth into close contact with their heritage.

But the forerunner of this ride, from Sitting Bull camp to the Wounded Knee Memorial in 1986-89, was done in accordance with an Oglala medicine man's vision to release the spirits and complete the grieving cycle for victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

This year's approximately 180-mile ride commemorates the flight of Chief Big Foot and 400 followers to the Badlands after Sitting Bull was killed in a botched arrest attempt at Standing Rock Reservation on Dec. 15, 1890.

It will end Friday in Wounded Knee on the 110th anniversary of the massacre of Big Foot and nearly 300 of those travelers.

Participants of earlier rides say the spiritual component was much stronger than it is today.

But Zouie Lone Eagle of Bridger believes spirits still invest this venture. She thinks she saw one Christmas morning.

She and her granddaughter, Carrie Lone Eagle, were headed toward the base of Big Foot Pass in Badlands National Park to watch the riders come off the summit when the women saw a gray horse cross the highway.

They stopped. "But there was nobody there. It was a vision. It kind of makes you think. Maybe these horses will live on," Zouie Lone Eagle said.

Lone Eagle is following her grandson, Bub Morrison, this year and has been supporting Big Foot rides since 1989.

Two years ago, at the McDaniel Ranch camp, she was sleeping in a car.

"I got up at 3 a.m. to light a cigarette," she said. "The staffs were leaning against a bale of hay beyond the fire, and behind them were four Indians with long hair and feathers on the side. I said, 'We've got visitors.' "

Tuesday was a rest day that brought welcome relief from the 12 days of frigid temperatures. The cold has been a constant traveling companion of these horsemen since the original eight left Sitting Bull camp under snowy skies Dec. 15.

The day after Christmas dawned clear, and the temperature climbed to near 30 degrees.

Today, the riders will head for a camp on American Horse Road

Trek gathers momentum as riders near Wounded Knee
By PETER HARRIMAN
Argus Leader

published: 12/28/00

KYLE -- Near a flat area where the last Ghost Dance was performed, the Big Foot Memorial riders set out Wednesday on one of the last long rides on their two-week trek across South Dakota.

The final ride of the 180-mile journey takes place today. The horsemen will circle up for the last time Friday for ceremonies at the Wounded Knee Memorial, where about 300 of Chief Big Foot's followers were killed by U.S. soldiers.

The victims of that 110-year-old massacre left Bullhead after the killing of Sitting Bull, in hopes of meeting up with the ghost dancers to the south.

The dance was supposed to rejuvenate Lakota culture and bring back the buffalo that was the center of plains Indian culture.

The modern ride started in 1986, in hopes of completing the cycle of grieving for the victims and renew the spirituality of the Lakota.

As this year's version nears its conclusion, it is becoming a different event than when it began Dec. 15, with eight riders behind a single staff in a snow squall at Sitting Bull camp.

Sixty riders trailed behind five staffs Wednesday and poured over the pine dotted hills and creek bottoms of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for about 20 miles.

The progress was marked by more than a dozen cars and pickups that bounced alongside with camera lenses poking out the windows. What had been an almost intimate crew a week ago, has become a media event.

There is enough sense of spectacle now that after a morning ride of about a dozen miles, the group formed up two abreast and paraded down a highway through Kyle to a lunch at the Little Wound School.

But the celebratory aspects of the ride are muted a bit by the history in this country. Besides the Ghost Dance site, the riders passed by a lone grave on a hilltop and the horses circled it.

Ron McNeil, great-great-great-grandson of Sitting Bull, announced this was where a former Sun Dance leader, Bernie Cross was buried. The Sun Dance grounds could be seen in the distance in a fold in the hills.

Despite all the attention given this ride Wednesday, such somber moments added their own color to the event.

Turning tragedy into strength

WOUNDED KNEE -- A foot-wide weathered concrete apron and a surrounding low chain link fence give the mass grave of Wounded Knee Massacre victims the appearance of a long, narrow swimming pool heaped with dirt.

It is a disconcerting image here on a wind swept hilltop off Highway 27 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Just below the grave, the empty shell of a church foundation is covered with spray painted graffiti, the messages twining into each other, as if the writers had no respect for or patience with their predecessors.

The scene, collectively, is gloomy.

One hundred and ten years after the massacre, the Miniconjou and Hunkpapa Sioux slaughtered here by the 7th Cavalry lie in no lovingly tended memorial park but in a place as easily dismissed as inconsequential as were the lives of the victims themselves.

Some 145 were buried in the mass grave, but more than 250 died in the massacre. Soldiers poured artillery fire into a camp full of women and children, then raced along the sides of a shallow, wide draw with rifles picking off survivors as they fled.

The Big Foot Memorial Riders, numbering more than 60 now, will saddle up one final time today, ride a short distance from Manderson to Wounded Knee and circle their mounts around this memorial for a concluding ceremony on the anniversary of the killing.

The journey began with eight riders Dec. 15, 180-miles to the north at Sitting Bull Camp. Now the group includes descendants of massacre victims; founders of the 1986 precursor of this ride who rode to release the spirits of the victims; and many young people who have treated the last two weeks as an adventure on horseback more than a pilgrimage to the site of a tragedy.

That may change today, as they get a look at this place.

More recent graves, some from the World War II era, lie just outside the memorial, suggesting this site, bedraggled as it is, remains special to generations of Lakota who succeeded the massacre.

The new graves all have individual markers. But the mass grave is denoted only by a small arch of red brick, white cinder block and steel, and by a single column of grey marble streaked with white. On it are inscribed the names of those victims who could be identified, headed by Chief Big Foot, who led them. At its base lies a yellow apple, and a small plastic bag containing colored Christmas candy and a cookie.

How the tragedy began

Historical markers nearby tell the story of the massacre. They outline the events that led to Wounded Knee, beginning with Sitting Bull's death in a botched arrest Dec. 15, 1890. That caused about 40 of his followers to flee Standing Rock Reservation. They met up with Big Foot's people, many of whom were close to starving after a summer drought ruined their crops and the government provided only half the winter rations agreed to by treaty.

Convinced that Sitting Bull's death was a result of his perceived role as a leader in the new Ghost Dance religion many of them were practicing, and that they all were in danger, the group headed for the Badlands. They hoped to seek safety there among Oglala Ghost Dancers. The religion promised that the Messiah who had appeared to the whites would appear to Indians and cover earth and white civilization with a new land rich with bison and ponies.

Some whites, including the new agent on the Pine Ridge Reservation, construed this as a prelude to war. Their pleas for federal troops increased the presence of the U.S. Army on the northern plains in the winter of 1890.

Traveling at night to avoid detection, Big Foot's people crossed more than 140 miles of wintry South Dakota, but were discovered about five miles from Wounded Knee on Dec. 28. The chief himself was gravely ill with pneumonia. The Indians surrendered to an Army detachment and were taken under a flag of truce to camp at Wounded Knee Creek prior to being escorted to the nearby Red Cloud Agency.

During the night, the 7th Cavalry reinforced the command. In all, 470 soldiers now had charge of about 400 Indians. They surrounded the Indian camp and placed four Hotchkiss cannons on a low hill to the west.

The following morning, Col. James Forsyth, commanding the 7th Cavalry, wanted to disarm the Indians before proceeding to Red Cloud Agency. Displeased with the handful of worn and obsolete weapons produced, he directed troops to search the camp. In the process they roughly handled women and children, frightening them. The search apparently uncovered a rifle. A shot was fired in a struggle for possession of it.

According to the testimony of Joe Horn Cloud, who survived the massacre, an officer ordered the soldiers to fire into the ranks of about 90 warriors. Half fell, including Big Foot. The remainder, armed mostly with knives, clubs and desperation, threw themselves at the soldiers.

Two cannons on the hill opened up on the camp, lobbing two-pound explosive shells into tipis full of women and children. Survivors made for the ravine.

Today, it is choked in places with green ash, their trunks and branches brittle and bare in late December, and a power line crosses it in one place. In 1890, there was timber in there, too, according to testimony of survivors who described hiding in the brush. Some left shelter trying to rescue children caught in the open.

The cannons were repositioned to cover the ravine, and the soldiers on the shoulders of the draw pursued the fleeing Indians, raking them with gun fire. In the undisciplined shooting, 25 troops were killed and 39 wounded, mostly by their own people.

Massacre's aftermath

Gen. Nelson Miles, who had overall command in the West in 1890 as commander of the Military Department of the Missouri, decried the events at Wounded Knee in a 1917 letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

"I have regarded the whole affair as most unjustifiable and worthy of the severest condemnation," he wrote.

No official action was ever leveled against participants, and, indeed, Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to a number of soldiers who took part in the "battle" of Wounded Knee.

The summary disposition of the victims' bodies and the refusal by the government to acknowledge the slaughter for decades seemed to dismiss the Lakota nation as unworthy of concern.

But when Alex White Plume and Birgil Kills Straight, in accordance with an Oglala medicine man's vision, rode with about eight companions from1986-89 to release the victims'# spirits, they began a process that has worked a significant change on the memory of the massacre.

Honoring Lakota culture

White Plume took part in the ride this year from Bridger to Wounded Knee. As the riders were forming up Thursday, White Plume said he believes the efforts of the first riders to conclude the grieving for Wounded Knee have been successful. The ride, in the past decade, was lengthened to begin at Sitting Bull Camp at the site of the chief's death and its character has evolved to bring young Lakotas into contact with their heritage.

"Probably 95 percent of the people taking part today are under the age of 17," White Plume said. His estimate may have been high, but his point was well taken. The majority of riders were youths.

"That puts a lump in my throat," he said. "It makes me all proud. A lot of them go to this ride to become a man, to prove they are worthy of being men."

This ride has drawn wide attention. People from Canada, California, New York, Minneaplis and Germany took part in or hovered around the fringes with cameras and microphones.

The last three days had a carnival atmosphere that was absent when eight riders left the lonely marker denoting the site of Sitting Bull's death and headed up out of the breaks of the Grand River under a snowy December sky.

But Lakota riders find compelling reasons to take part. Joe Lafferty of Iron Lightning joined for the second half of the ride this year, carrying a staff for a favorite sister who died of a heart attack. The two of them had made this ride in the past, he said. Now it was time to honor her memory.

The Wounded Knee Massacre, which has been a tragedy, through the Big Foot Memorial Ride has became a means to strengthen traditional Lakota beliefs and culture.

Youth learn culture

In the past two weeks, Dana Dupris saw it happen among the seven boys from Eagle Butte he brought to take part in the majority of the ride this year.

After riding through days of below zero wind chill and scrambling up and down icy, steep draws, Dupris watched his group make its way easily across the slick ice of a frozen creek on the final day-long ride Thursday.

"I think they've become a whole lot more confident in their riding," he said. "They were scared of the responsibility of carrying the staffs," he pointed out. Over the course of the ride, the Eagle Butte youths became bold enough to lope to the head of the column and take turns bearing honor staffs.

"They've also been strengthened in the idea of getting along," he said. "They've learned to settle their differences."

As the young riders crossed the creek, spurred their way up the steep slope and blended into the sinuous column winding through the tan, rounded hills, that image made a point: The collective vision of Lakota on horseback, commemorating Chief Big Foot, may be the most fitting memorial of all to the victims of Wounded Knee.

Reach Peter Harriman at 575-3615 or pharrima@argusleader.com

Big Foot Ride ends with contrasts at Wounded Knee

By PETER HARRIMAN Argus Leader
http://www.argusleader.com/news/Saturdayfeature.shtml
published: 12/30/00

WOUNDED KNEE -- On a windy Friday morning when masses of gray clouds roiling in a blue sky mirrored the dappled pattern of white snow and tan bare grass on the Wounded Knee landscape, the Big Foot Memorial Ride concluded with ceremonies at the Wounded Knee memorial.

On the 110th anniversary of the massacre it remembers, this event was as full of contrast as the weather and the surrounding prairie.

It had the feel of a high school graduation day when classmates realize they are about to go separate ways. In the morning, riders and supporters drew out the daily chores of watering, feeding and saddling horses to try to make an experience that has bound some of them for the past two weeks last a little longer.

It was one part celebratory. This ride began Dec. 15, about 180 miles north, at Sitting Bull Camp. A handful made the entire journey that ended Thursday at Manderson. They crossed some of South Dakota's wildest prairie and river breaks in the most inhospitable winter weather. Many riders made at least a week's worth of the daily 20- to 40-mile legs, a feat of horsemanship and endurance.

And finally it was a somber ceremony recalling Chief Big Foot and more than 250 Minniconjou and Hunkpapa, mostly unarmed, and the majority women and children, who died under the guns of the 7th Cavalry Dec. 29, 1890.

Arvol Looking Horse, keeper of the Lakota Sacred Pipe, stressed to the riders the sacrificial and purifying aspects of the trek.

"You suffered through the cold weather like our grandfathers did 110 years ago," he said. "Let go of hatred, anger, jealousy. Bring back respect among the people. That's who we are."

At the start two weeks ago, eight riders crossed the frozen Grand River, heading south in deep snow from Sitting Bull Camp near the North Dakota border. At the height of the ride Wednesday and Thursday about 60 riders took part on the route through the Pine Ridge Reservation. For the conclusion Friday, there were about 50.

At 11:15 a.m., they rode out for the last time from the horse camp below the memorial and near the site of the massacre. Behind Sitting Bull's great-great-great grandson Ron McNeil, resplendent in a red wool blanket coat and astride a tall black horse, the riders in single file formed a long crescent from the portable corral at the camp to a level field at the base of the low hill where the Wounded Knee victims are buried. They circled, as they did every day before taking on miles of rugged terrain. There was no long ride ahead of them this day, however.

They listened to Corky Last Horse, a veteran of the Big Foot Ride and its precursor that began in 1986. He recounted a brief history of the massacre. Then, he told the riders they had suffered in the frigid weather, and they should congratulate themselves for finishing. More than half the group were teenagers and younger, and Last Horse told them they were members of a traditional Lakota horse nation. As if in agreement, a chorus of whinnies rang out from the mounts.

Looking Horse, keeper of the Lakota Sacred Pipe, dismounted and trailing an eagle feather headdress, walked about the center of the circle and spoke. He echoed Last Horse's point.

"Deep in your heart, you have made the journey. You have rode here because of our grandfathers up there," and he nodded towards the memorial. "You have totally believed in yourselves as the horse nation."

As the circle broke, the riders made their way up the hill and surrounded the mass grave of the Wounded Knee victims. They were joined there by perhaps 75 onlookers. Within the fence surrounding the grave itself, on either side of a grey and white marble gravestone, Last Horse, Looking Horse, six honor staff bearers, and approximately 20 descendants of Wounded Knee victims assembled. There were prayers and songs in Lakota, and the descendants each sprinkled a bit of food on the site for their ancestors.

The forerunner of the Big Foot Memorial Ride, from 1986-89 was designed to liberate the spirits of the Wounded Knee victims. So the ceremony Friday was reflective, as memorial services are, but it did not seem overwhelmed by the ache of unreconciled tragedy.

Perhaps Last Horse offered the most pointed assessment of what the Big Foot Memorial Ride means on the 110th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre. This pilgrimage across South Dakota brought participants in close contact with the Lakota heritage. As the group was still circled below the memorial, Last Horse told them, "This is a spiritual ride. It's very powerful. It's not something you can play with, mess around with, put down and let go. This ride is like nothing else you've ever been on."

Reach Peter Harriman at 575-3615 or pharrima@argusleader.com

Ouachitalk HOME	OUACHITALK TEXT SEARCH PAGE	Ouachitalk Communicator 04/15/08 Medicine Wheel Healing and Rehabilitation Community	OUACHITALK LINKS
Writers and Poets Gallery	Indian Foods and Herbs	Native American Arts and Crafts	Ouachitalk Classifieds
LEONARD PELTIER FREEDOM CAMPAIGN	Native American and Related Photos	Native American and Related Photos 2	Native American and Related Photos 3
Native American and Related Photos 4	Native American and Related Photos 5	The Dream Catcher	OUACHITALK EMAIL & PRIVACY POLICY
		WebDesigns by Palmer Studio
			OUACHITALK.COM P.O. BOX 907 MOUNT IDA, AR. 71957
MORE TO COME SOON! CHECK BACK OFTEN!			ouachitalk@hotmail.com