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December
30, 1974
Notes
from a Day at Wounded Knee
By Kevin Barry McKiernan
Kevin
Barry McKiernan is a 30 year old journalist who resides
in the Twin Cities. He covered the Wounded Knee occupation
and many of the subsequent court trials for National
Public Radio and for KSJN Radio in St. Paul. He
was a free lance photographer for UPI wireservice and
for WCCO-TV during the occupation and for UPI Audio
Network during the Bank-Means trial. He spent 7 weeks
inside Wounded Knee during the takeover. The following
is a page from a diary of his experiences.
APRIL
17, 1973: Dawn
Food drop! I scramble awake from the floor of the trailer
house and run outside. It seems incredible! Three single
engine planes fly-in from the north, dipping low wing
to wing over Wounded Knee. Seven silky parachutes float
to earth. The aircraft fan out, disappearing over the
pine-studded hills. They're gone as quicky as they came.
One
parachute lands in a field across Manderson Road. Food!
What a beautiful sight for sore eyes and hungry bellies.
People are flocking from everywhere, gathering up the
chutes, ripping the bundles open---fresh carrots, potatoes,
rice, chocolate bars, rolling tobacco. And leaflets
bearing the words, "Freedom from Oppression in Indochina."
Then
all hell breaks loose. There's sniper fire from "Vulture," the
largest of the federal helicopters. It's raking Manderson
Road where food's being carried to the Security Building
for distribution. Bullets are dancing in the dirt around
Florine Hollowhorn's kids. It's like a salt-shaker
pouring around them. A miracle nobody's hit. I grab
some food and run back to the trailer.
7:00
a.m.
Automatic gunfire from Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC's)
on the hill behind the trailer. In minutes there
are sounds of shooting all over town. AIM's are
running for cover under trailers, behind cars, down in
the trenches, from building to building behind the community
center.
Mary
Ellen leaves the new-born baby with Grandma to go for
food to the trailer next door. A federal sniper's
tracer bullet splatters the metal door frame inches
from her arm. She dashes inside. The round
lies imbedded near the knob, smoldering as the door
bangs closed behind her. Bullets go through both
trailers. Our bedroom window shatters. Trailers
are so shabbily built they offer about as much protection
as a Dixie Cup.
9:00
a.m.
Federal fire seems confined to north and west sides of
Wounded Knee. Run next door to fill a pouch with
some of the Bugler tobacco from the food drop. Nice
to be smoking again. Helicopters flying high around
our perimeters. AIM's fire on them but they're
out of range. Junior is shot through the left palm
while reloading his own pistol.
Automatic
fire coming in from the hills. Single shots from
.22 rifles and 20 gauge shotguns going out from the
village. Sounds dueling in the morning sunlight. CRACK-CRACK-CRACK! Plip! Boom! Plip! Boom! Grandma
sits on the couch holding the week-old baby she delivered. She's
calmly braiding the long black hair of her 35 year
old son, a Philadelphia truckdriver after he left the
reservation in Kansas. He's sitting below her
on the living room floor. She looks through the
glass and smiles, "Listen to that meadow lark, singing
through all of this!" Grandma's got a .38 Special
stuck in the bosom of her dress. She still refuses
to be driven uptown from the trailer where she's made
her home these past weeks.
Breakfast
Some rice. I ask Mary Ellen if she'll take the
baby to safer quarters over at the trading post, if I
can get a vehicle to the trailer to pick them up. She
says yes. But the only car with gas is the white
Toyota---which ran up the hill behind us carrying men
and guns an hour ago. There was a crazy face-off
with an APC. Everybody got pinned down. They
crawled down the hill backwards, abandoning the car. I
can't get to it, but I'll see if anything else is running.
Grab
the Minolta still camera and cautiously venture out,
carrying three pop bottles full of drinking water for
the guys in the closest bunker. Hop, crawl and
scramble across the road. Flatten out under the bullets
whizzing overhead I remember what Bobby said; if the
rounds are only whizzing, they're at least a yard above
you; if they're cracking, "They're right on you!" Sweating. Make
my way a few hundred yards up to the swig of water
and leave the pop bottles. Notice a green van
parked outside by the sandbags. Yell to the people
across the field in the houses: "Is the truck running?" A
girl sticks her head out of the closest project home---"No,
it's out of gas!" Fifty yard dash to her doorway. Clutching
the Minolta. Running for my life.
Three
people in the house, all in the kitchen lying down
below the window lines. A pregnant Chippewa girl
is on the floor, her back propped up against the sink
pipes. There are a couple of guns on the table. I
grab a walkie-talkie and try to call Pawnee Command
Post to get a car down here for Mary Ellen. No
response. Batteries are weak.
Two
more people burst into the kitchen. Bad news. Someone's
been shot! Up in the old Episcopal church on
the hill near King Cobra bunker. Hurt bad, they
say. That new nurse sprained her ankle trying
to run through fire to get to him. Others trying
to stretcher him out over the draws and through Big
Foot's burial ground. But the fire's too heavy. They're
trapped somewhere halfway to the field hospital.
11:00
a.m.
Up from the lower projects comes Mary Ellen hurrying,
babe in arms. She's flanked by Ray and Gwen carrying
guns. Two girls, Venona and Kamook, raising white
flags behind them. As they weave from house to
house, the APC fire is still loud but it doesn't seem
to be hitting near them. I run down to meet them. We
make our way back to the house. Mary Ellen and
the baby ought to be safe in the basement.
11:30
a.m.
A tall young kid from Rosebud named Bo, that mouthy,
shovy character who's always asking me why I'm taking pictures,
decides to make a run for the trading post. He
saddles up the white stallion I rode the other day. He
mounts up, pushes his cowboy hat down tight over his
straight black hair and digs in the spurs. Everybody's
cheering for him as he gallops south through the ditches
along Manderson Road. APC's on the hill open up
with short, steady bursts. He crests the ridge
in a cloud of dust. He's whipping that horse flank
to flank. Bullets are popping in the dirt ahead
of him. Underneath him. Behind him. Then
the clip-clops grow fainter. And the gunfire subsides
as he disappears toward the Big Foot Trail. How
he made it i'll never know.
Ray
is reading war comics and seems to be relaxing out
on the back porch in the morning sun. Gwen paces
back and forth through the yard among the junked cars,
barking dogs and laundry on the line. Then they
decide they'll try to make it uptown, too. It's
crazy to go through the ditches where Bo went. The
only way is the back gulches, then up to the church
shack near King Cobra where that guy was hit. I
grab my camera and follow. We go up the hills
and down the canyons, out of sight from the APC's. Gwen's
leading with her drawn .22 pistol. Ray's behind,
with one of his two handguns out. I'm bringing
up the rear with my 50mm Minolta.
The
last two hundred yards are wide open up the west side
of the hill to the church. We're zig-zagging
but still a hell of a target. Final sprint to
the door. Somebody throws it open. We burst
out of breath into the darkened interior.
I
see a guy with three days beard growth lying on a mattress
by a blanket-shrouded window. He motions me to
get down, pointing his carbine at the wet wooden floor
underneath my boots---"There was a guy just got shot
here! He was sitting in a chair where you're
standing. Get the hell down!"
I
sink to the floor. A white basin at my feet is
full of blood. Somebody else says it's from the
man they just carried out, a 47 year old Apache. Look
around the room. Bullet holes in the sides of
the walls. Guy with the carbine points to the
hole which passaged the round that struck the man: "Frank
Clearwater. He was just sitting there in that
chair. Just woke up. Almost everybody else
was still sleeping..." He points to the half-dozen
mattresses that line the floor around the pot-bellied
stove in the middle of the shack. "...Bullet
came through the wall, blew the back of his head off. He
never knew what hit him. And he just came in
yesterday with his wife. She was pregnant. They
hitchhiked all the way from North Carolina. He
never even picked up a gun..."
Now
I remember Frank! He and his wife were the ones
who showed up yesterday in the Security Building. Asked
me for blankets I told them where to find some,
then shot the shit with Frank for a few minutes. I
had a little Bull Durham tobacco left. Asked
him if he had any rolling papers. "No," he said, "but
here's cigarette...take couple. I just got in
and there's still a full pack." They were Pall
Malls.
Noon
Ray and Gwen are lying on the floor. Ray's filling
the chambers of his .38 with new rounds. The World War
II Medal of Honor earned under General MacArthur in Asia
as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army lies pinned on his
chest next to a red and white AIM button. An American
flag is sewn upside down on the back of his jersey. Cree,
Cheyenne, Apache and Seminole---what a mixture in this
guy---who as a young kid almost 30 years ago enlisted
in the Service to keep the world safe for democracy.
Gwen's still panting form the run. "Times like this," she
says between breaks," I wish I were ten years younger!" Before
long they're up and out the door.
Everybody's
got tobacco from this morning's air drop. We sit on
the dirt floor rolling cigarettes. I'm taking pictures.
Occasionally, I pop out by the trench where there's
a telescope mount with heavy metal field glasses like
those you'd find at the top of the Empire State or
in Golden Gate Park by the San Francisco Bay. I can
see really well as far west as that APC position on
the hill behind the trailers. Magnification is powerful,
but the focus is ripply from this distance. It's producing
heat waves, but I can see two APC's, a jeep and five
men up close enough to make out which men are carrying
weapons. Wish I had a telephoto lens like this on my
minolta.
Bobo,
the crazy little guy who broke the spindle on my tape
recorder at the wedding the other night, bursts into
the bunker. His face is awash with sweat, a medicine
bag is hanging on a rawhide cord form his neck. "Where's
the nurse with the sprained ankle?" He's been sent
out to guide her back to the hospital downtown, where
three Indians now lie wounded. She's needed more
than ever since the doctor's gone out with Frank up
to RB#1, to get medovacked to the Pine Ridge Hospital.
He's
got no gun, but he's planned a route to town. Ann,
the California photographer, and I decide to go, too. We
jump out of the bunker and into the trench (which leads
to a halfway carved tunned under the house). Plan
is to try to run from ditch to ditch down the east
side of the hill until we reach the Manderson Road. "I
can't run!" The nurse yells to Bobo. "You
gotta run! Do you want to stay alive?" he says. She's
starting to get hysterical. Bobo's already up
out of the trench and zig-zagging down the flare-burnt
hillside. Then Ann, a Nikon camera and lens bouncing
all over the front of her dungaree jacket. I
grab the nurse's hand and we careen down the hill,
diving in the first ditch. It's a shallow one,
offering little or no protection from the Feds on the
ridge to the east. She's crying out with pain
from her injured leg. Bobo's yelling we got to
get the hell out of here. I suggest we make a
run for Big Foot's grave, then try to make it behind
the tombstones and through the cemetery weeds to the
Catholic Church. Bobo says the fire from the
western ridges is too heavy. Nurse keeps calling
to Bobo, "Brother, I can't Brother, it's too dangerous,
Brother, my leg..."
Spurts
of automatic fire as we reach Big Foot Trail and cross
it. Drag, pull, cajole nurse into running with
me. She's half-freaked out. Of course,
I might be too, if I'd seen that guy's head half blown
off.
12:30
p.m.
We make it. Hospital's in a low key frenzy. Three
wounded (included Junior). Junior's in main dispensary
unconscious, and i.v. into his right arm, his left hand
bandaged from the bullet wound. Sara is doing dishes
in a careful, almost hiding way in the kitchen. There's
a guy named Daryl lying on a stretcher in the TV room
with three bullets in his right arm and a bullet hole
in his foot. Eva's got an i.v. going into him,
Black Elk's got peyote trying to work the bullets to
the surface in his arms. No luck. They're
M-16 "tumblers," like they used in Vietnam. Who
knows where they go after hitting you. The kid's
half in shock. "I didn't have a gun. They
pinned me down in gully. Didn't have a chance. That
M______ F_____ sniper. Even in Vietnam they wouldn't
have done this to me." Another Vietnam vet lies
on a plywood bunk across the room. He's got a bullet
in his heel, and they can't get his boot off.
People
running in and out, dodging bullets from the street. Whole
squad of guys pinned against trailer wall 40 feet across
from hospital door. I sit with Grace Black Elk. We're
all numb. Firing outside is constant. It
doesn't seem real. Daryl calls for music. Portable
record player begins playing Indian drum chants. Medics
are given tourniquets and other supplies in little
packs, then dispatched to the bunkers. (Daryl
had lain in the gully across from the Catholic church
for 45 minutes before any help could be gotten to him.) I
tell people I'll make a dash across the street to the
trading post basement for more still film, the movie
camera and the recorder. Somebody yells out, "Don't
go! They'll be dragging you in here in a minute!" Laughter. Somebody
yells, "Hey, what size boots do you wear?" I
light out across the open street to the trading post.
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