The Road to Wounded Knee, A Map

 

Above, a "Map of the Country embraced in the recent Campaign against the Hostile Sioux Indians of Dakota," published by Congress six months after the Wounded Knee Massacre, June 1891. 

The Road to Wounded Knee, A Map

The Lakhota Divided at Cherry Creek

By Dakota Wind

In February, I attended the Waniyetu Elders Conference on Standing Rock, which was held at Prairie Knights Casino. An elder on Standing Rock inquired about the path to Wounded Knee from Sitting Bull's last camp on the Grand River after the recent memorial ride to Wounded Knee this past December, and I was happy to look into the matter. I contacted lekshi Bruce Brown Wolf at Cheyenne River in South Dakota and he informed me that Spotted Elk (aka Big Foot) was not present at Sitting Bull's death, but that the Lakhota who fled that camp encountered Spotted Elk at the Deep Creek-Cheyenne River confluence. Indeed, the Congressional map does reflect that Spotted Elk's camp location at Deep Creek. 

Congress published a map of the trail based on field reports and observations in December 1890. The map does not tell us how big the group of survivors who initially fled from Sitting Bull's camp after his tragic death. It does give us a general idea of the path they took to Cherry Creek. 

The Lakhota who left Sitting Bull's last camp numbered about 577 people, mostly women and children. When they came to the Ash-Cherry confluence the party split. We know the outcome of the Lakhota were continued on to Wounded Knee.

The other half, about 227, descended Cherry Creek then descended the Cheyenne River heading east. They were captured on Mnikxowozhu Creek and escorted directly to Fort Benton then to Fort Sully. They were eventually released at the end of May 1891 and returned to Standing Rock. 

I took the Congressional map, removed the English, added placenames in Lakhol'iya, and uploaded it onto Georeferencer via the David Rumsey Map Collection. You can see how the map stretched and warped with each pin on the historic map to a contemporary map. Each pin moved the route from as little as one mile to as much as five miles. 

From this point, I correlated this geolocated map to a Google Map. I also compared this data to topographical maps along the Lakhota route. 

The line I created is only an idea of a route along known places. This is not the exact route that the Lakhota took from Sitting Bull's camp to Wounded Knee, merely a suggestion. The topographical maps provided an idea of ease of travel across the open prairie steppe in the heart of winter. 

I took several screen captures of the route, traced the rivers and overlaid geometric shapes on the landscape, hexagons for hills, triangles for the Badlands. This last map is what I came up with. 

You can download a high-resolution of the Lakhota version of the Congressional Map here.

You can download a high resolution of the geometric inspired landscape version of the Lakhota's flight to Wounded Knee here.