Indian Couple Hope Fateful Wedding Date Brings Healing : Anniversary: Les Whitehawk Moran of the Sioux weds LaWanna Tushana of the Santee in Silverado Canyon a century after the slaughter at Wounded Knee.

As a boy, Les Whitehawk Moran was haunted by a simple monument that stood near the South Dakota reservation where he grew up. The carvings on the stone recorded the date: Dec. 29, 1890. On that day, the U.S. Cavalry killed more than 150 Sioux men, women and children, leaving a bloody legacy at Wounded Knee Creek.

The slaughter 100 years ago Saturday was the last major armed confrontation between U.S. troops and the Indians.

Whitehawk and Valli Benton, whose Indian name is LaWanna Tushana, were married Saturday in a ceremony symbolizing the rebirth of the Sioux nation and in remembrance of a people who refused to be crushed by the U.S. government.

“The wedding day binds us to our future as well as to our past,” Tushana said. “It’s a new beginning for Les and myself, as well as a new year for the Indians.”

Whitehawk and Tushana said they chose their wedding day without realizing that it was the centennial of the attack. They did not realize that the day had such significance until they invited a chief to the wedding. When he told them that it was the anniversary of Wounded Knee, the couple said, they realized that they had chosen the day well.

The couple wore traditional wedding garb of the Lakota, or Sioux, people for the ceremony at the Silverado Community Church, where friends and families gathered. Tushana, 34, wore a spectacular headdress decorated with beads that portrayed the South Dakota high grounds and mountains. A train of white quail feathers cascaded to her feet.

Whitehawk, 37, wore a beaded neck choker, which were worn by warriors in the belief that they would protect them from bullets. His shirt was adorned with tassles.

The couple said their wedding ceremony, which took less than 40 minutes, marks a healing process for them as Indians.

Whitehawk is a member of the Rosebud tribe of South Dakota, which was portrayed in Kevin Costner’s movie, “Dances With Wolves.” He grew up on the Rosebud reservation, a community tormented by poverty and its past. He said his grandfather was a uwepe, or medicine man, who constantly reminded him that Wounded Knee was part of his heritage.

“It was like how Christopher Columbus is taught to non-Indian children,” Whitehawk said. “Wounded Knee was my basic history.”

A Santee tribe member, Tushana said she too learned about the massacre while growing up in Florida.

The legacy began 100 years ago, when Ghost Dance religion spread throughout the Sioux. The nation had been evicted from the Black Hills--an area that had been promised years before to the Indians as part of a truce with the United States--when gold was found in the territory.

The Ghost Dance promised that land taken by the U.S. government would be returned, herds of American buffalo would be restored and the white man would be gone. The braves followed the dance because it meant freedom, Whitehawk said.

But the Ghost Dance frightened Army leaders, who ordered the arrest of the warrior chief Sitting Bull. He resisted and was killed at Standing Rock Reservation. His followers, in a bid to escape the cavalry, tried desperately to outrun the troops and reach another reservation. But they were stopped by the cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

There, the cavalry surrounded the Sioux camp. While the Indians were being disarmed, someone fired a single rifle shot. Chaos and death then reigned. Women and children were killed along with the men. From then on, the once-powerful Sioux nation was divided into seven tribes that were scattered among various reservations.

It wasn’t until 1980 that the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the payment of $122 million to the Sioux as compensation for the loss of the Black Hills.