The Massacre at Wounded Knee

<p>On a bitterly cold morning in December 1890 the United States Army surrounded a Lakota band led by Chief Spotted Elk known as Big Foot on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The Lakota were hungry weary and seeking peace but the Seventh Cavalry came with orders to disarm them. What followed was not a battle. It was a massacre.</p><p>More than 250 Lakota men women and children were cut down by rifles and Hotchkiss guns. Families who had once danced for hope in the Ghost Dance circle fell in the snow their lives ended in chaos and terror. Among the dead lay mothers shielding infants elders praying for mercy and children who had nowhere to run. The United States government called it victory. Survivors called it murder. History remembers it as Wounded Knee.</p><p><em>The Massacre at Wounded Knee</em> by John Frances tells this story in vivid human detail. This is not a textbook of dates and figures. It is a true history told with the voice of memory. From the disappearance of the buffalo to the rise of the Ghost Dance from the killing of Sitting Bull to the final march of Big Foot's people Frances builds the road that led to Wounded Knee step by step until silence turned to gunfire and the snow turned red.</p>