american-holocaust

PESTILENCE AND GENOCIDE 127were fired upon they fled. . . . There was a woman with an infant in herarms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce, and the womenand children of course were strewn all along the circular village until theywere dispatched. Right near the flag of truce a mother was shot down withher infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing,and that especially was a very sad sight. The women as they were fleeingwith their babes were killed together, shot right through, and the womenwho were very heavy with child were also killed. . . . After most all of themhad been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or woundedshould come forth and they would be safe. Little boys who were not woundedcame out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight anumber of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there. . . . Of courseit would have been all right if only the men were killed; we would feelalmost grateful for it. But the fact of the killing of the women, and -moreespecially the killing of the young boys and girls who arj! to go to make upthe future strength of the Indian people, is the saddest part of the wholeaffair and we feel it very sorely . 111Four days after this piece of work the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer's editorBaum sounded his approval, asserting that "we had better, in order toprotect our civilization, follow it up . . . . and wipe these untamed anduntamable creatures from the face of the earth." 112Some native people did survive at Wounded Knee, however, including"a baby of about a year old warmly wrapped and entirely unhurt," recalledan Indian witness to the carnage. "I brought her in, and she wasafterward adopted and educated by an army officer." 113 This was the childnamed Zintka Lanuni-or Lost Bird-who in fact was taken by GeneralWilliam Colby against the other survivors' objections, not to educate herbut to display her thereafter for profit as a genuine Indian "war curio."When Colby first showed off "his newly acquired possession," reportedhis home town newspaper, "not less than 500 persons called at his houseto see it." Finally put on display in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, LostBird died at age twenty-nine in Los Angeles. In July 1991, the Lakota hadher remains moved from Los Angeles back to Wounded Knee, where shewas interred, a hundred years after the massacre, next to the mass gravethat still marks the killing field where the rest of her family lies buried. 114Sometimes it was raw slaughter, sometimes it was the raging fire ofexotic introduced disease. But, year in and year out, in countless placesacross the length and breadth of the continent, the "scene of desolation"described by one observer of events in western Canada was repeated overand over again:In whatever direction you turn, nothing but sad wrecks of mortality meetthe eye; lodges standing on every hill, but not a streak of smoke rising fromthem. Not a sound can be heard to break the awful stillness, save the ominouscroak of ravens, and the mournful howl of wolves fattening on the