A Native American View of the Wounded Knee Massacre
by BRUCE E. JOHANSEN
The familiar history of the Wounded
Knee massacre features a gaggle of
headline-hungry newspaper reporters
lusting after the last great "Indian
war." Another, little-known angle on
this story was written by an Omaha
editor and his Native American wife
who presented the massacre and the
events leading up to it from a Native
American point of view, a rarity in the
mainstream press at the end of the
nineteenth century.
Hugh Reilly, a masters-degree student
in communication at the University of
Nebraska at Omaha, assembled the
story of Thomas H. Tibbies and
Susette ("Bright Eyes") LaFlesche as
part of his thesis, Treatment of Native
Americans by the Frontier Press 1868
- 1891: An Omaha, Nebraska Study,
which received an award as the best
masters thesis at the university during
1997, the year it was defended.
Comparing the coverage of Tibbies
and LaFlesche to that of other
reporters. Reilly observes that it was
sometimes difficult to tell that they
were observing the same events. This
contrast is especially vivid as Reilly
compares accounts by Tibbies and
LaFlesche (who worked for the
Omaha World-Herald) to reporting
published by another newspaper, the
Omaha Bee, a gossipy tabloid which
seemed to specialize in fictional battles and stereotypical "Red Devils,"
two staples of frontier journalism in
1890. In its initial reporting, the Bee
headlined: "Red Devils Bite the
Dust," as the World-Herald called the
killing of at least 170 Native
Americans at Wounded Knee "A
Crime Against Civilization."
Tibbies and LaFlesche had been
infusing a Native American perspective of the Plains Indian wars into
their writing for a decade and a half
by the time they described events at
and near Wounded Knee Creek. Their
work began in 1879, when they met
the Ponca chief Standing Bear and a
number of his tribal associates who
had been forced from their homeland
along the Niobrara River in northern
Nebraska.
The Ponca Standing Bear (c. 18301902) gained national notoriety in the
late 1870s, during a time of forced
removal for the Ponca and other
Native peoples on the Great Plains.
He led some of the Poncas on two
500-mile marches from Indian
Territory (now Oklahoma) back to
Nebraska. When the group reached
Omaha, Standing Bear became
engaged in the first court case to result
in a declaration that American Indians
should be treated as human beings
under the law
f
for his rifle."
Tibbies, who was thirty-nine years of
age at the time, described himself as
the "ebullient, volatile assistant editor
of the Omaha Daily Herald" when he
first met Standing Bear. Before taking a job at the Omaha Herald Tibbies
had been an outspoken abolitionist, a
scout in the Civil War, and a circuitriding preacher.
Tibbies was filling in for the editor of
the Herald the day that General Crook
brought the Poncas to town. He put
the Sunday newspaper to bed at 4:30
a.m., slept for two and a half hours,
then rose at 7 a.m. and walked five
miles north from the newspaper's
downtown offices to Fort Omaha.
After he interviewed members of
Standing Bear's group, Tibbies then
made his way south again, running
part of the way, stopping at every
church he could find, asking pastors if
he could address their congregations
about the travail of the Poncas. At a
Congregational Church, the pastor,
Rev. Mr. Sherill, allowed him to speak
between the opening hymns. After
hearing Tibbies' account, two churches passed resolutions to the Interior
Department and Secretary Carl
Schurz on the Poncas' behalf. By the
next day, Tibbies was preparing wire
dispatches for newspapers in Chicago,
New York, and other cities, as he
searched for attorneys who would represent Standing Bear and his people in
Omaha federal district court.
Omaha citizens obtained a writ of
habeas corpus and brought the Army
into the federal court of Judge Elmer
Dundy, who ruled that an Indian is a
person within the meaning of the law,
and no law gave the Army authority to
forcibly remove them from their
lands. Further, Dundy ruled that the
right of expatriation is "a natural and
inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of
During March, 1877, troops under
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiGeneral George Crook, from Fort
ness..."
Omaha, arrested Standing Bear and
his party, and conveyed them to Fort By late 1890, the Omaha Herald had
Omaha, just north of the growing merged with the World. Tibbies was
frontier city of the same name. Once an influential senior editor there as
he had arrived at the fort, which was reports arrived that roughly 3,500
serving as his headquarters, Crook Sioux, mostly Lakota devotees of the
took the initiative and called Tibbies, Ghost Dance, had taken up residence
assistant editor of the Omaha Herald. in the South Dakota Badlands northTibbies' stories were wired to larger west of the Pine Ridge Agency, an
newspapers on the East Coast, caus- area that they called The Stronghold.
ing a storm of protest letters to The dances stirred fears of an uprising
Congress on the Poncas' behalf.
among white farmers and ranchers in
Crook already had announced his dis- the area, who called for troops. The
gust at how Standing Bear's party troops arrived with an increasing
were being treated: "An Irishman, number of newspaper correspondents.
German, Chinaman, Turk, or Tarter This was a time when newspapers
will be protected in life and property" routinely pumped up their circulations
under the laws of the United States, with ribald reporting, a practice in
General Crook had said, "But the which a newspaper editor in
Indian can comAberdeen, South Dakota, L. Frank
Baum (who
mand respect for
later
would
his rights only
author the
so long as he
O
inspires terror
habeas corpus. Thus, under U.S. law,
the Army could not relocate Standing
Bear's party by force without cause.
Susette LaFlesche (1854-1903) was
born near Bellevue, Nebraska, (a few
miles south of the city of Omaha), a
daughter of Joseph ("Iron Eye")
LaFlesche and Mary Gale LaFlesche,
daughter of an Army surgeon.
LaFlesche attended the Presbyterian
mission school on the Omaha reservation. She also studied art at the
University of Nebraska. In the late
1870s, she traveled with her father
Joseph LaFlesche to Indian Territory
(Later Oklahoma) to render rudimentary medical attention to the Poncas
with Standing Bear. When the Poncas
attempted to escape their forced exile
and return to their homeland, they
marched for several weeks in midwinter, finally eating their moccasins
to survive, arriving at the Omaha
reservation with their bare feet bleeding in the snow. The Omahas, particularly the LaFlesche family, granted
the Poncas sanctuary and sustenance.
Susette accompanied her brother
Francis and Standing Bear on a lecture tour of Eastern cities during 1879
and 1880 to support the Poncas' case
for a return of their homeland.
Newspaper articles about the Poncas'
forced exile by Tibbies helped ignite a
furor in Congress and among the public. In 1882, Susette, who often used
the name "Bright Eyes" in public,
married Tibbies.
She also coauthored a memoir with Standing
Bear, Ploughed Under The Story of
an Indian Chief (1882). During ensuing years, LaFlesche and Tibbies also
toured the British Isles. Later, the
couple lived in Washington, D.C., but
eventually Susette returned to
Lincoln, Nebraska, where she died in
1903. She was buried in Bancroft,
Nebraska.
books) also played a role. The sober
reporting of the World-Herald stood
in stark contrast to the Indian-baiting
of the Omaha Bee. An indication of
the Bee's literary ambiance was provided by a poem it published in 1873,
which was unearthed by Reilly. The
poem was titled "Hunt Them Down."
The poem, which called for extermination in the rawest of language, had
several verses, including the following two:
Hunt the murderous
Modoc down,
Bid, the paltering cease.
Martyred Canby's blood demands.
Righteous vengeance at our
hands.
Aye, nor Canby's blood alone.
Death these fiends have broadcast.
sown.
Let them pay each gory crown.
Hunt them down!
Hunt the savage murderers down.
Red of hand and black of heart.
Lies and treachery all their art.
Cowards, robbers, pawns, and
scum.
Of the desert whence they come.
All the human that they bear,
Seems the outward shape they
wear.
Reeking with unnumbered crimes,
Faithless unbred a thousand
times.
The same stereotypes emerged again
in the Bee's reporting of events related to the Ghost Dance in late 1890.
Reilly quotes journalism historian
Elmo Scott Watson as saying that
while the Ghost Dance was called an
"uprising," an "outbreak," and a
"war" in the contemporary press, it
was none of these things. No nonIndians in Nebraska or South Dakota
were molested or killed by Ghost
Dancers, and none of their property
was harmed.
Unverified rumors were presented as
reports from reliable sources, idle
gossip became purported fact, and,
according to Scott, "a large number of
the nation's newspapers indulged in a
field day of exaggeration, distortion,
and just plain faking." In many ways,
Wounded Knee was a
journalistic
training
ground for sensational,
mass-market
newspaper provocation of the SpanishAmerican
War
eight years later.
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