One of the most important leads that I tend to follow when checking a story

for its validity is from the reporters of the era...  Some of them cried out about

injustices done to the Indian since the time of contact, and this one in particular

stands out in my memory not only because of the compassion he felt, but the

Truth in which he paints his tale, the Only tale, the One tale.  I can honestly say

that the sincerety in his writing touches the very heart of my soul.

 

I hope it touches you too.

 

The idea came to me first to share this with you, so I transcribed the beginninh directly

from  DVD #1 of 500 Nations by Kevin Costner, then as it became more of a chore

to look up some of the language of the time and places that Thomas spoke of, I finally 

found the last part of this (from "Nothing I have ever seen...") on the internet, here:

 

LM

 

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"With the sunset, the weather turned intensly cold.  About seven o'clock that night,

the seventh cavalry brought in the long train of dead and wounded soldiers and Indians 

from Wounded Knee. 

 

Fourty nine wounded Sioux women and children had been piled into a few old wagons...

 

The wounded Indian women and children were eventually carried into an agency church

where they lay in silence on the floor beneath a pulpit decorated with a Christmas banner reading:

 

'Peace on earth, goodwill to Men."

 

Nothing I have seen in my whole… life ever affected or depressed or haunted me like the scenes I saw

that night in that church. One un-wounded old woman… held a baby on her lap… I handed a cup of water

to the old woman, telling her to give it to the child, who grabbed it as if parched with thirst.

As she swallowed it hurriedly, I saw it gush right out again, a bloodstained stream, through a hole in her neck."
Heartsick, I went to… find the surgeon… For a moment he stood there near the door, looking over the mass

of suffering and dying women and children…

 

The silence they kept was so complete that it was oppressive…

 

Then to my amazement I saw that the surgeon, who I knew had served in the Civil War, attending the wounded… from the Wilderness to Appomattox, began to grow pale… 'This is the first time I've seen a lot of women and children shot to pieces,' he said. 'I can't stand it'….

 

Out at Wounded Knee, because a storm set in, followed by a blizzard, the bodies of the slain Indians lay untouched for three days, frozen stiff from where they had fallen. Finally they were buried in a large trench dug on the battlefield itself. On that third day Colonel Colby… saw the blanket of a corpse move…

 

Under the blanket, snuggled up to its dead mother, he found a suckling baby girl."

 

 

 

- Thomas Tibbles - reporter, Omaha World Herald (1890)