 and I, Black Elk, was 27 years old. We heard that Bigfoot was coming down from a bad land with nearly 400 people. Some of these were from Sittin Bowl's band. They had run away when Sittin Bowl was killed and joined Bigfoot on Good River in this band. And all the others were women and children and some old man. They were all starving and freezing and Bigfoot was so sick that they had to bring him along in a pony drag. They had all run away to hide in a bad land and they were coming in now because they were starving and freezing. When they crossed Smoky Earth River, they followed up Madison Route Creek to its head. Soldiers were over there looking for them. Soldiers had everything and were not freezing and starving. Near Port Pine Butte, the soldiers came to the Bigfoot's and they surrendered and went along with the soldiers to Wounded Knee Creek, where the Brandon Store is now and also known as Wounded Knee Store. It was an evening when we heard that the Bigfoot's were coming over there with the soldiers. About 15 miles, it was the next morning, December 29, 1890, that something terrible happened. In a little while, we had come to the top of the ridge where looking to the east, you can see for the first time the monument and the burying grounds on the hill where the terrible things started. Just south of the burial ground on the little hill, a deep dry gulch runs about east and west. Very crooked and it rises westward to nearly the top of the ridge where we were. But our sheets were sometimes called at Battle Creek now. We stopped on a ridge of the dry gulch. Wagon guns were still going off over there on the little hill and they were going off again when they hit along the gulch. There was much shooting down yonder and there were many cries and we could see cavalrymen scattered over the hills ahead of us, shooting into it, where the women and children were running away and trying to hide in the gullies and in the stunted pines. We were huddled under a clay bank and some cavalrymen were there pointing their guns at them. The shooting were coming up from Pine Ridge and we all charged on the soldiers. It was where the trouble began. What we saw was terrible. Dead and wounded women and children and little babies were scattered all over because they had huddled together and some were scattered, all bunches of them had been killed and torn to pieces where the wagon guns hit them. I saw a little baby trying to suck its mother and dead. There were two little boys at one place in this gulf. They had guns and they had been killing soldiers all by themselves. We could see the soldiers, they had killed. The boys were all alone, little boys. We drove the soldiers back and dug themselves in, people, to drive them out from there. In the evening, they marched off up Wounded Knee Creek and then we saw all that they had done there. Women and children were heaped and scattered all over the place where the soldiers had their wagon guns. The dry gulfs all the way to the high reach. The dead women and children and babies were scattered. We're not for two, but I was not sorry for the women and children. It was better for them to be happy in the other world. And I wanted to be there too. But before I went there, I wanted to have revenge. I thought there might be a day and we shall have revenge. After the soldiers marched away, I heard from my friend Doggie how the trouble started. And he was right there by Yellowbird when it happened. This is the way it was. In the morning, the soldiers began to take all the guns away from the Bigfoot, who were camped in the flat with all the little hill where the monument and burying grounds are now. The people had stacked most of their guns and even their knives, but the teepee where Bigfoot was lying sick. Soldiers were on the little hill and all the soldiers across the dry gulfs to the south and over east along the Wounded Knee Creek too. The people were nearly surrounded and the wagon guns were pointing at them. Some had not yet given up their guns and so the soldiers were searching the teepee, throwing things around and poking into everything. There was a man called Yellowbird. And he and another man were standing in front of the teepee where Bigfoot was lying sick. They had white sheets around and over them with eye holes to look through and they had their guns under these. An officer came to search them. He took the old man's gun and then started to take Yellowbird, but Yellowbird would not let go. He raffled with the officer and while they were raffling, the gun went off and killed the officer. Washiroo and some others had said he meant to do this, but dog chief was standing right there and he told me it was not so. As soon as the guns went off, dog chief told me an officer shot and killed Bigfoot who was lying sick inside the teepee. Then suddenly nobody knew what was happening except that the soldiers were all shooting and the wagon guns began going off right in amongst the people. Meenow were shot down right there. The women and children ran into the gulf in up west dropping all the time for the soldiers shot them as they ran. There was only about a hundred warriors and there were nearly 500 soldiers. The warriors filed their guns and knives. They fought soldiers with only their hands until they got their guns. Dog chief saw Yellowbird run into a teepee with his gun and from there he killed soldiers until the teepee caught fire. Then he died full of... It was a good winter day when all this happened. The sun was shining. But after the soldiers marched away from their dirty work a heavy snow began to fall. The wind came up in the night. There was a big blizzard and it grew very cold. The snow drifted deep in the crooked gulf and it was one long grave of butchered women and children and babies who had never done any harm and were only trying to run away. And so it was all over. I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this school age I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered along the crooked gulf as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. I can still see that something else did die in a bloody mud and it was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I so great a vision was given in my youth. You see me now a pitiful old man, nothing for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer and a sacred tree is dead.