[RERUN] EPISODE 58 Sitting Bull: Wounded Knee (Part 5)

·2 hr 59 min·5 clips

A struggle over a deaf man's gun triggered a volley at Wounded Knee, turning a surrender into a slaughter of unarmed Lakota.

Episode 58 opens with fatigue. The host says the restart outside old paywalls has been rocky: sponsors cancel, discouragement creeps in, and the work sounds heavier than he expected. He lands on gratitude instead of polish. Patreon support is the reason he gives for keeping the show moving. Then the history tightens. After Sitting Bull is killed, many followers run through a moment the host sees as fixable, until it isn't. They look for safety with friends and relatives around Cheyenne River. He pauses on the place because he has been there, and because it helps him picture people moving in fear after seeing their leader killed. Their anger makes sense. They had been dancing for a better world, for children who would not face disease and starvation. Arrest was not what they thought they had earned. Nobody knows what comes next. The army may be behind them, the police have already lit the fuse, and the refugees bring news that makes everyone jumpier. Bigfoot arrives quietly. At Cheyenne River, Spotted Elk, called Bigfoot because of oversized moccasins, is a chief known for diplomacy and peacekeeping. Even he cannot smooth everything over. Edwin Sumner says Bigfoot is working hard to keep his followers quiet, while many of them are devoted ghost dancers. The ending is hard to shake. A little girl found after Wounded Knee is called a relic by her adoptive father, and the host lets that word sit there. Survival does not save her from what follows: racism, teenage pregnancy, a stillborn child, marriage, illness, syphilis, and death at 29.

As heard by us

A patient, grim account of how grief, rumor, and government force collide after Sitting Bull's killing.

Daniele Bolelli tells a grim, emotionally charged story about the aftermath of Sitting Bull's killing, following the flight to Cheyenne River and the tension that greets Bigfoot and his people there.

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Why you'd press play

Follow the panic after Sitting Bull's killing as it spreads toward Cheyenne River and the road to Wounded Knee.

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