Voices of Wounded Knee

by William S.E. Coleman

In Voices of Wounded Knee , William S. E. Coleman brings together for the first time all the available sources-Lakota, military, and civilian-on the massacre of 29 December 1890. He recreates the Ghost Dance in detail and shows how it related to the events leading up to the massacre. Using accounts of participants and observers, Coleman reconstructs the massacre moment by moment. He places contradictory accounts in direct juxtaposition, allowing the reader to decide who was telling the truth.

Genres: History, Indigenous

446 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2000

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made me appreciate more than any other the hard work of writing about history: evaluating sources, shaping a narrative, formulating a theory. Not because Mr. Coleman did it so well, but because he didn't do it at all . . he reprints firsthand accounts of the events surrounding the infamous 1890 massacre of the Sioux by US forces, annotated with his italicized comments. So this book is 400 pages of footnotes. Have you ever tried to read 400 pages of footnotes? Difficult and not incredibly informative.

[David Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's a collection of primary documents, official records and collected testimonies, of the time leading up to and including the U.S. Army's massacre of Lakotas at Wounded Knee, S.Dakota. Eloquent and wretched both, this book is about the horrifying road sometimes chosen on the jorney to American "Exceptionalism."