Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre

“The story is tragic, the scholarship exhilarating” (Elliott West, author of The Contested Plains) in this history of the massacre of the Lakota Sioux

On December 29, 1890, American troops opened fire with howitzers on hundreds of unarmed Lakota Sioux men, women, and children near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, killing nearly 300 Sioux. As acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson shows in Wounded Knee, the massacre grew out of a set of political forces all too familiar to us today: fierce partisanship, heated political rhetoric, and an irresponsible, profit-driven media.

Richardson tells a dramatically new story about the Wounded Knee massacre, revealing that its origins lay not in the West but in the corridors of political power back East. Politicians in Washington, Democrat and Republican alike, sought to set the stage for mass murder by exploiting an age-old political tool -- fear.

Assiduously researched and beautifully written, Wounded Knee will be the definitive account of an epochal American tragedy.

Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre

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ISBN-13:	9780465021307
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/25/2010
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	392
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College and the author of the newsletter Letters from an American. She has written about the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the American West in award-winning books whose subjects stretch from the European settlement of the North American continent to the history of the Republican Party through the Trump administration. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Guardian, among other outlets.

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Editorial Reviews

Richardson (History/Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War, 2007, etc.) argues that the Wounded Knee massacre was a direct result of Gilded Age political expediency. The author examines partisan wrangling in the decades after the Civil War that observers of the current scene will find all too familiar. Looking to expand their power, President Benjamin Harrison and a Republican-controlled Congress admitted South Dakota to the Union in 1889. Few in Washington cared that much of the state's land was the Sioux reservation. The plans of railroad and mining companies, reliable supporters of the Republicans, trumped the welfare of the indigenous peoples. Enlightened whites of the day saw the "civilization" of the Sioux-by which they meant turning them into ersatz whites-as the highest goal for the natives. Others, remembering Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn, would have been just as happy to see them exterminated. Indian agents, who were usually unqualified if not outright corrupt, doled out rations stingily. So when in 1890 Sioux (and other tribes) responded to the threats to their way of life by adopting the Ghost Dance religion, which promised the disappearance of whites and the return of buffalo and open land, the whites perceived it as a rebellion. The U.S. Army was called in to stabilize the situation. The stakes were raised by an unresolved election that could determine control of the Senate and a power struggle between the Army and the Department of the Interior, which oversaw Indian affairs. The atrocity, during which soldiers mowed down some 300 Sioux men, women and children, was probably preventable, but few of thosewho participated seemed to know how to stop it-or made any great effort to do so. Richardson brings the actors, both Sioux and white, into clear perspective, and paints the broader context with a deft hand. Sober but stinging account of one of the saddest chapters in American history.

Kirkus Reviews

In Wounded Knee, Richardson examined heretofore mostly overlooked papers of President Benjamin Harrison and other recently discovered documents to conclude that Washington politics and other factors led to the blood at Wounded Knee.”
—Gannett News Service

“[Richardson argues] that the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890) was the inevitable end result of Reconstruction politics, which featured bitter partisanship and a media establishment run amok... A well‑crafted study of the Reconstruction era.”—Library Journal

“The latest scholarly analysis of the causes leading to this tragic event takes a unique tack…. [A] meticulously documented account.”—Booklist

“A gifted historian with a talent for narrative, Heather Cox Richardson uses her skills here to show that the killings at Wounded Knee might have happened at the edge of America, but they happened because of conflicts at the center of the nation’s capital and the heart of the political struggles of the nineteenth century. A terrific book.”—Eric Rauchway, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of Blessed Among Nations and Murdering McKinley

“This poignant, professional history appears almost thirty years after Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, but could not be more timely as Americans face anew the human cost of their polarized politics, media spin, greed, hustling, pretense, and inept paternalism toward subject peoples. Richardson’s research reveals that even an Indian massacre is far more than a simple matter of racism.”—Walter A. McDougall, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Heavens and the Earth, and author of Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War

“In Wounded Knee, Heather Cox Richardson continues her path breaking work in bringing the American West into its rightful place in the remaking of the nation during and after the Civil War. Here she portrays one of the most infamous events of its time as a consequence of politics, both in its seediest maneuverings and its more ennobling impulses. The story is tragic, the scholarship exhilarating, and the book is a must read for anyone drawn to this troubling and fascinating time.”—Elliott West, Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, and author of The Contested Plains and The Last Indian War

“Heather Cox Richardson explodes the myth that the tragedy at Wounded Knee was simply an unfortunate accident or an outgrowth of cross‑cultural misunderstandings on the frontier. Instead, she proves that the massacre emerged out of misguided federal Indian policies and, above all else, partisan politics. The story is chilling. You’ll want to put it down, but because it’s so well told here, you won’t be able to.”—Ari Kelman, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans

“With a mastery that brings even her bit players to life, Heather Cox Richardson has given us a fresh and vivid account of the greed, partisan politics, prejudice, and butchery that led to the massacre at Wounded Knee. The result is a superb book, history at its very best.”—Leonard L. Richards, author of The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War

“Beyond grace and intelligence, what makes this book so important is that it demonstrates how one of the most tragic moments in all of American history is best understood not only as a spasm of genocidal violence but as something emerging from the everyday processes of politics and culture in the late nineteenth century. It is precisely that mixture of the banal and the horrific that makes this book compelling, significant, and deeply troubling.”—William Deverell, Director of the Huntington USC Institute on California and the West

“In this provocative history Heather Cox Richardson traces the close linkages among late‑nineteenth century politics, the West, and the horrendous Wounded Knee incident of 1890‑91. No previous study has uncovered the full political account the author provides in this thorough, convincing volume.”—Richard W. Etulain, author of Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West

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