Wounded Knee by Heather Cox Richardson

Wounded Knee

In the book Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, author Heather Cox Richardson explores the tragedy of the massacre at Wounded Knee. Besides the incident itself where some 300 members of the Sioux nation were murdered by American military troops, Richardson examines the political power behind the decision to use military force to force westward expansion of white Americans. She argues that it is the actions of these men who worked behind desks and closed doors who are responsible for what happened at Wounded Knee.

The author of the book is a history professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Besides the book Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, she has written about other aspects of American history. Her works include West from Appomattox, The Greatest Nation of the Earth, and The Death of Reconstruction. From these texts it is clear that she is heavily interested in the antebellum and post-Civil War periods from American history.

For her sources, Richardson uses both primary and secondary texts. She cites newspapers and other documents from the period in which the massacre took place which adds heavily to her authenticity and her viability. Other sources include interviews with Native Americans and texts written by other history scholars.

Scholars have been primarily supportive of Richardson's book. However, some sources, such as The Library Journal are negative in their reviews. This review in particular was not positive, stating that Richardson's connections are tenuous and that she neglects the fact that Native Americans were being massacred since the first European explorers set food in the New World. Her thesis is that the political powers of the period were responsible for the massacre, which is certainly true. However, her attitude is that this is a unique situation and that Harrison's administration was more evil than men who came before him, when this is not the case.

The major strength of the book is Richardson's apparent passion for the topic on which she writes. Richardson believes that the plight of the Native Americans and genocide of the nations and various tribes is one of the most disturbing aspects of American history and that not nearly enough attention has been given to these events. She places these murders on the same plane of evil as slavery. Although the horror of the war against native tribes has been given attention in recent decades, it is still not viewed with the same level of disgust as slavery. Through books like Richardson's, these atrocities can be given their proper weight and attention in the hopes that they never be committed again.