Plan Seeks U.S. Park Status for Wounded Knee

More than a century after the U.S. Cavalry killed 400 Sioux at Wounded Knee, S.D., ending the U.S.-Indian wars, the National Park Service has decided to begin taking steps to establish a national historical park on the site of the battle.

Park Service officials said Saturday that they plan to order a feasibility study designed to pave the way for possible acquisition of the land. Most of the 330 acres at the site where the massacre began are already part of the Pine Ridge Indian reservation.

David Simons, a staff member of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., which has pressed for years to have the battleground enshrined, said the purchase would be “the most important single addition we have ever made to our national parks system.”

“It would recognize our diversity and acknowledge one of our military mistakes as well as glorifying our military’s past,” he said. “It would be like tearing down the Berlin Wall.”

The battle of Wounded Knee, which began on Dec. 29, 1890, launched one of the most bitter disputes in U.S.-Indian history. Ever since, the Sioux have contended that the killings were an outright massacre. The Army has portrayed it as a response to armed attack.

The announcement by the Park Service represented a turnaround by the Interior Department. When Congress considered such legislation last year, the department opposed the creation of such a park, mostly on budgetary grounds.

With the state of South Dakota sponsoring a year of reconciliation as the centennial of the massacre approached, Congress adopted a statement of regret for the cavalry’s action, but Indian leaders were not mollified.

The area already has been designated as a historically significant national landmark since 1965, and the feasibility study that the department is about to undertake will review possible options and will seek to set boundaries for the park.

Dennis Galvin, the Park Service’s associate director for planning and development, said the government is determined to find an arrangement that will involve the Sioux in the management.

One of the most difficult questions to deal with will be the sharp contradictions in the historical accounts of what happened at Wounded Knee, between the oral history passed down by Sioux survivors and the official account written by Army officers.

Galvin conceded that trying to build a circumstantial case for one version of the battle might only intensify the dispute.

As a result, he said, the Park Service probably will outline three or four alternatives for taking both versions into account.

“It is going to be very difficult trying . . . to discover what really happened and it is quite possible that we will never be able to agree,” he said.

One possibility is that authorities will use magnetometers in an effort to determine where the various armaments were located and to generate new circumstantial evidence to clear up the century-old disputes.

Interest in the plains Indians has been sharpened in recent months by the motion picture “Dances With Wolves,” whose plot takes place a generation before Wounded Knee as the Sioux and the white man moved toward their inexorable collision.

The Wounded Knee episode came amid mounting grievances by Sioux on the Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee reservations over restrictions in food supplies granted them by treaty, and rising fears by whites of an emotional religious movement growing among the Indians.

That unrest led to a clash in which Indian Chief Sitting Bull was killed by Indian police on the reservation. In the turmoil following his death, frightened Sioux fled and were pursued by thousands of U.S. Army troops.

Most of the more than 300 Indian victims who fell after the disputed outbreak of fighting were women and children.

Indian activists are still demanding a formal apology for the massacre and payment of reparations to descendants of the victims.