In The Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Chapter of the Indian Wars [Hardcover]

Roger Di Silvestro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 2005

The story of the last deaths in the American Indian wars and their far-reaching ramifications

The massacre of at least 150 Indians by the U.S. Army along Wounded Knee Creek in the Lakota reservation on December 29, 1890 generally is considered the closing salvo in America's Indian Wars. But as Roger L. Di Silvestro reveals in startling detail, the fight was hardly over. Two tragic events in the weeks immediately following would reignite the conflict and forever color its legacy.

In the Shadow of Wounded Knee is the first book to chronicle the senseless killings that riveted the country in 1891: the assassination of Lieutenant Edward Casey by the young Brulé Lakota warrior Plenty Horses, and the ambush of Few Tails and two other Indians by rancher Pete Culbertsons and his brothers. According to frontier justice of the day, Plenty Horses would have been summarily hanged and the Culbertsons would never have been tried. Yet in the aftermath of Wounded Knee--a slaughter that had horrified politicians, soldiers, and citizens alike--the trial of Plenty Horses made headlines nationwide as a cause célèbre. Soon prosecutors faced a quandary: if Plenty Horses were convicted, then the Army itself would have to be held accountable for its actions at Wounded Knee. How Plenty Horses--a "civilized" Indian who was educated in a school back east--was ultimately exonerated, and the Culbertsons were forced to stand trial, forms a fascinating closing chapter in the Indian Wars and in the last days of the Old West.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry killed more than 150 Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee, S.Dak. Was it a battle or a massacre? That became the key point of dispute when a Brulé Lakota warrior named Plenty Horses was brought to trial for the murder of Lt. Edward Casey, whom he had killed a week after the slaughter. If the U.S. was not at war with the Lakota, reasoning went, then the Lakota were murdered; but if a state of war did exist, then Plenty Horses's "fatal bullet through the back of Casey's skull" was also an act of war, not murder. Complicating the juridical conundrum was a simpler case: shortly after Casey's death, the "infamous" Culbertson brothers attacked a peaceful Indian encampment. Would an Indian hang for killing a white officer? Could two white men be convicted for killing a settlement of Indians? Though scholars may object that the author, an editor at National Wildlife, oversimplifies the complex history of the American West, Di Silvestro's informal tone makes for breezy reading. Readers new to the subject will find his clear explanation helpful, the violent encounters dramatic and the trials absorbing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Contrary to popular belief, the slaughter of the Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee in 1890 was not the final "battle" of the Plains Indian war. Small-scale skirmishes continued for several months afterward, the most notorious in that string of events being the killing of Lieutenant Edward Casey by a Lakota warrior, Plenty Horses, and a killing of several Lakota by a rancher, Pete Culbertson. DiSilvestro, a senior editor at National Wildlife magazine, recounts the events that led to those fatal confrontations as well as the controversial legal aftermath, with an engrossing mixture of compassion and moral outrage. He begins with a survey of the decades-long conflict between the Plains tribes and advancing American settlers. Although much of the ground covered here is familiar, DiSilvestro is particularly adept in his descriptions of the fissures within the various Lakota bands that were exacerbated by the strains of constant white encroachment on their lands. DiSilvestro also provides interesting biographical sketches of Casey and Plenty Horses, which elevates their eventual confrontation to the level of inevitable tragedy. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company; First printing/Full number line edition (November 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802714617
• ISBN-13: 978-0802714619
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #711,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I began writing short stories when I was 7 or 8 years old; the earliest of these endeavors seemed strangely derivative of 1950s Japanese sci-fi films. I have worked as a magazine editor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, Defenders of Wildlife, and the National Audubon Society. I also have written for radio, TV, and motion pictures, primarily as a production director with National Audubon Television. Presently, I am a senior editor at the National Wildlife Federation. Although most of my ten books have focused on wildlife conservation or on history in the U.S. West, I also write fiction and published two novels, one in the late 1980s and one in the early 1990s.

In my photos you will find a current picture of me, used on the dustjacket of my book "Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands;" a photo of me giving a speech about Roosevelt in the Badlands on Theodore Roosevelt Island, Virginia, in October 2008; and a picture of me dressed in the style of a Roosevelt photograph (the orginal that I used as a model coincidentally appears on the cover of my book, "Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands")when I was about 16 years old. Please visit my website, www.TheodoreRooseveltintheBadlands.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another tiny piece of the intricate tapestry that is American history, January 7, 2006

By 

Paul Tognetti "The real world is so much more... (Cranston, RI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In The Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Chapter of the Indian Wars (Hardcover)

The more you read about American history the more you come to realize the significance that so many obscure and long forgotten events had on the history of our nation. I have read about a great many such events over the past few years and this was a major reason that I was drawn to Roger DiSilvestro's new book "In The Shadow Of Wounded Knee". Certainly I had read about the tragic events that had taken place at Wounded Knee SD in that last week of December 1890. But I was totally clueless about the subsequent assassination of Lt. Edward Casey by a young Lakota warrier known as Plenty Horses and of the ambush and cold-blooded killing just days later of a middle-aged Lakota Indian known as Few Tails by three brothers named Culbertson. Both Plenty Horses and the Culbertson brothers would be accused of murder and be forced to stand trial. The outcomes of these trials were assumed to be a foregone conclusion but events were rapidly unfolding that had the potential to alter the outcomes of one or both of these trials.

There was much at stake for both the Lakota Indians and for the newly arrived ranchers and settlers.
Understanding just what was going on in the Dakotas during these troubled times would be extremely difficult without an understanding of the history of relations between the U.S. government and the Indian nations. In the first four chapters of "In The Shadow Of Wounded Knee" Roger DiSilvestro does a superb job of getting the reader up to speed on this checkered history. And so when these two unfortunate killings occur in January 1891 the reader is abundantly aware of the context in which this violence took place. At the same time you will be much more likely to understand the highly charged climate that surrounded each of these trials. If you are an avid reader of history like I am then "In The Shadow of Wounded Knee" will give you another little piece of the puzzle that will help you to understand just what was going on in the Plains as hostilities between the U.S. Army and the Indian nations were beginning to wind down. Clearly most Indian leaders could see the handwriting on the wall. "In The Shadow of Wounded Knee" is extremely well researched and very well written. My kudos to Roger DiSilvestro for a job well done. Highly Recommended.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, solid insight into overlooked chapter of 1890 Pine Ridge Campaign, December 26, 2005

By 

John D. Mackintosh (LEXINGTON, SC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In The Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Chapter of the Indian Wars (Hardcover)

The author is to be commended for exploring in the depth and detail that only a book can provide, an incident receiving heretofore scant attention in previous histories of this campaign. Robert Utley's 1960s "American Heritage" article on Plenty Horses and Casey has stood as the best source on Casey's death, until now. As with many such books, the author spends a great deal of time with historical background and context, which, if you are a Sioux Wars student, you may already be familiar with in one form or another. To his credit, these sections are well-written and engaging as well as revealing of some new insight. Clearly, he has done his homework.

The best part of the book lies in the courtroom drama that unfolded when Plenty Horses was put on trial for the killing of Lt. Casey (see background description provided by Amazon) that was held in eastern South Dakota at Sioux Falls, far removed from the scene of conflict. The excitement that pervaded the town is related quite well through the use of contemporary newspaper quotes. The first trial ended in a hung jury; the second trial produced his acquital. The author fully explores how it was established that the U.S. military and the Lakota were at war and therefore the killing of Casey by Plenty Horses was not a murder but a legitimate wartime killing. The defense attorneys for Plenty Horses built a case resting on a number of issues proving that a wartime climate prevailed which impacted on the way Plenty Horses reacted to Lt. Casey's close approach to the the Lakota camp that resulted in his being shot: the large troop deployments, the fights at Wounded Knee and Drexel Mission that preceded the Casey killing, the issuance of army rations rather than Indian Bureau rations to those Lakota who surrendered and the testimony of Captain Frank Baldwin, close underling of none other than General Nelson Miles, who expressed Miles' opinion as to the nature of state of war prevailing at that time. The author makes clear and cites evidence concerning the military's fear that if Plenty Horsees was convivted of murder, the door might have been opened to legally question the nature of the numerous Lakota deaths that occured as a result of Wounded Knee, especially the number of women and children killed.

In the end, Plenty Horses escaped capital punishment, returned to the reservation where he lived until the 1930s. As for Wounded Knee itself, the author wisely states that "the truth of what happened at Wounded Knee is beyond reach."

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening tale from a fascinating period in American history., February 9, 2006

By 

P.S. Turner "writer" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: In The Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Chapter of the Indian Wars (Hardcover)

"In the Shadow of Wounded Knee" is a deftly written account of several trials that served as an epilogue to the better-known events of Wounded Knee. DiSilvestro does an excellent job of setting the stage for the trial of Plenty Horses, a Lakota Indian accused of murdering Edward Casey, the last white soldier killed in the Indian Wars, and a secondary trial in which several low-life cattlemen were accused of killing a well-known and well-liked Indian. DiSilvestro describes the sad state of affairs that led to the massacre of Indians at Wounded Knee, and how reaction to the massacre colored, in particular, the trial of Plenty Horses. DiSilvestro provides a lively account of the uneasy state of affairs between whites and Indians, the specific events leading the two murder cases, the trials, and their aftermath. The influence of politics on both trials says a great deal about that time in history, but also left me thinking more about how politics still influences justice (think of the current debate about our obligations to prisoners in the war on terror). "In the Shadow of Wounded Knee" is a fluid, thought-provoking, even-handed treatment of a fascinating topic that continues to be of great relevance.