Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee

Mary Crow Dog: Long ago, to end the Indian Wars, the United States made a treaty with Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, the leaders of the Sioux Indian Nations. The paper gave this great Sioux Nation to our grandfathers alone. Our lands began in Canada and stretched south into the Badlands of what would become the Dakotas. At its heart were the Black Hills, sacred to our tribes. We were promised this land was ours, as long as the grass grows and the waters flow. The treaty was signed by President Ulyssey S. Grant. Then General Custer announced there was gold in our Black Hills. He led his Seventh Calvary to protect the miners and the white settlers who swarmed in, and the railroad men, the saloon keepers and the lawyers who followed. They ripped the heart out of our Black Hills, they slaughtered our buffalo and drove our people off the rich prarie into the Badlands. It began for us a time of great darkness. All the dreams of our people seemed to die here, at Wounded Knee, where Custer's men shot down 300 Lakota men, women and children, and threw their bodies into a mass grave. This is where I came to find my soul, which I had lost and which had wandered by itself for many years. This land will be yours the white men said, as long and the grass grows and the waters flow. As long as the grass grows and the waters flow.