Overview

"The last significant clash of arms in the American Indian Wars took place on December 29, 1890, on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. Of the 350 Teton Sioux Indians there, two-thirds were women and children. When the smoke cleared, 84 men and 62 women and children lay dead, their bodies scattered along a stretch of more than a mile where they had been trying to flee. Of some 500 soldiers and scouts, about 30 were dead—some, probably, from their own crossfire. Wounded Knee has excited contradictory accounts and heated emotions. To answer whether it was a battle or a massacre, Rex Alan Smith goes further into the historical records and cultural traditions of the combatants than anyone has gone before. His work results in what Alvin Josephy Jr., editor of American Heritage, calls ""the most definitive and unbiased"" account of all, Moon of Popping Trees."

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9780803291201

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One of the best books on Indian history published in this century. -- Western History Association As an Indian historian, I consider Moon of Popping Trees triumphantly superb. . . . History in its truest form and untarnished perspective. --Dallas Chief Eagle, former Director of the United Sioux Tribes Solid, thoroughly researched, objective, and readable . . . one of the best books on Indian history to be published in this century. --Donald E. Worcester, Texas Christian University Sensitive, balanced, and creatively written. . . . Moon of Popping Trees is not just a good book, it is a great one. --W. David Baird, Pepperdine University

As an Indian historian, I consider Moon of Popping Trees triumphantly superb. . . . History in its truest form and untarnished perspective. --Dallas Chief Eagle, former Director of the United Sioux Tribes

One of the best books on Indian history published in this century. -- Western History Association Solid, thoroughly researched, objective, and readable . . . one of the best books on Indian history to be published in this century. --Donald E. Worcester, Texas Christian University As an Indian historian, I consider Moon of Popping Trees triumphantly superb. . . . History in its truest form and untarnished perspective. --Dallas Chief Eagle, former Director of the United Sioux Tribes Sensitive, balanced, and creatively written. . . . Moon of Popping Trees is not just a good book, it is a great one. --W. David Baird, Pepperdine University

A history of the 19th century battles between the Sioux and the white man that culminated at Wounded Knee - here whitewashed by the author's recourse to assertions of historical inevitability. Massacres and abrogations of treaty rights, described by Smith, are the responsibility of Indian agents who knew nothing about the Red Man, or a rare bloodthirsty cavalry officer, or a newspaper reporter making up sensational stories, or a general who got his faulty information second hand, or drunken Indian army scouts whose knowledge of the Sioux language was deficient, or sincere but uninformed would-be Indian benefactors like Henry Laurens Dawes, who bribed Indians with food to sign away their lands and rights. Later the bribe was withdrawn and the Indians given land which would have been an impossibility for the most experienced of white farmers. (To the Indians, of course, farming was women's work; no allowance at all was made for the vast change in lifestyle forced on them.) To Smith, good intentions function as an adequate excuse for an often willful lack of intelligence: never did they more clearly pave the way to hell. As for Wounded Knee, there is simply no getting around the fact that the whites were restricting the Indians' freedom of movement, religion, and assemblage on their own lands, ultimately slaughtering several hundred people who were under Army escort to a federal fort. The author counsels forgetting past grievances (and dropping the Indians' legal claims!). Perhaps we shall soon be saying the same to the Vietnamese? (Kirkus Reviews)

As an Indian historian, I consider Moon of Popping Trees triumphantly superb. . . . History in its truest form and untarnished perspective. --Dallas Chief Eagle, former Director of the United Sioux Tribes <br>

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