"It was 170 years since a village led by the Little Thunders' great-great-grandfather was massacred by the U.S. Army, leaving eighty-six Lakota dead, many of them women and children. As I wrote in a November 2024 feature story for Smithsonian, the episode, which occurred 35 years before the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee, remains little known even today. I also reported how, while the village lay smoldering, Army Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren, a noncombatant topographer attached to the force, collected dozens of Lakota belongings."
"Warren soon donated the belongings to the Smithsonian, then barely a decade old, where they remained primarily in storage ever since. Now, after a long and seemingly quixotic quest led by the Little Thunder cousins and several associates, including Paul Soderman, a relative of William S. Harney, the Army brigadier general who orchestrated the massacre, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has returned the Lakota belongings under a policy designed to address unethical museum collecting practices from the past."
A Lakota village led by the Little Thunders' great-great-grandfather was massacred by the U.S. Army 170 years ago, leaving eighty-six people dead, including many women and children. The massacre occurred 35 years before Wounded Knee and remains little known. Army Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren collected dozens of Lakota belongings while the village smoldered and later donated them to the then-young Smithsonian, where they remained mostly in storage. Little Thunder cousins and associates, including Paul Soderman, pursued a long effort to reclaim the items. The National Museum of Natural History returned the belongings under a policy addressing past unethical collecting practices.
Read at www.esquire.com
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