A Suspenseful Show of Red Power

FROM the start, the confrontation at Wounded Knee, S. Dak., between militant Indians and local, state and federal authorities had all the elements of bad theater. The Indians insisted on outmoded makeup (war paint) and melodramatic lines ("Massacre us or meet our human needs"). The Federal Government brought in outrageous props, including war planes. There were too many theatrical asides aimed at the TV cameras and too many studied parallels to the Viet Nam War, including a "demilitarized zone" and "ceasefire observers." Finally there was the self-conscious symbolism of the choice of the site itself, the mass burial ground for victims of the U.S. Cavalry's most brutal massacre of the Indians.

But as the days ticked by, the drama drew an ever larger American audience under its spell. By midweek, after Justice Department officials issued an ultimatum to the Indians to abandon the trading post at Wounded Knee by 6 p.m. on Thursday, the suspense grew. In the rolling hills surrounding the Indian enclave, U.S. Army armored personnel carriers rumbled in preparation for an assault. At the roadblocks and in command posts, several of the FBI agents and marshals--there were 300 in all--restlessly broke down their M-16 rifles and adjusted the straps on their gas masks. At one point, two U.S. Air Force Phantoms streaked low overhead, reportedly on "reconnaissance" missions.

Just below the Indians' stronghold --a brilliantly whitewashed Catholic church high atop a bluff--an Indian drove a bulldozer in and out of sight as he deepened the trenches and thickened the fortifications that would shield the militants against the approaching attack. On the perimeters, patrols spied on Government operations through field glasses. An Indian guard, fingering his .30-30 under the gathering storm clouds, boasted: "They are going to see how tough we are. Anything comes down that road, we blow it apart."

TIME Correspondent Ken Huff, who spent a night inside the Indian encampment, reported what happened just before the Government deadline for evacuation:

"Seven Indian leaders stripped, some naked, others to their shorts, and entered an Indian sweat lodge--a wooden framework covered by an orange carpet and a purple blanket--to receive clarity of mind and body. The warriors, perhaps 150 of them, seemed perfectly willing to die. With the sun setting behind their backs and the chill wind whipping up puffs of dust, they formed a semicircle and watched as the tribal fathers emerged from the steaming lodge.

"A Sioux spiritual leader named Leonard Crow Dog struck up a chant in the Lakota language. As each warrior passed by, he blessed him and painted a slash or a circle of red powder under the left eye. Each warrior then stepped into a white tepee, making a holy sign over the bleached skull of a buffalo head."

Whoops. Fortunately, a major conflict never came to pass. The spiritual preparations were suddenly interrupted an hour before the deadline when a blue Coupe de Ville Cadillac roared up, shattering the solemnity. Dennis Banks, an Indian leader, jumped out to announce that both sides had agreed to a ceasefire proposed by the National Council of Churches of Christ. Reported Huff: "There were whoops of joy as the sun set behind a ridge spotted with the silhouettes of jagged pines." That precarious truce held despite a shootout between Indian patrol guards and federal marshals just an hour later. Two Indians were shot, one in the hand and one in the leg, and both sides argued over who had fired first.

To prevent further infractions, 34 observers from the council, clearly identified by their white armbands with the NCC logo, took up positions around Wounded Knee.

Yet despite their efforts, sporadic shooting continued--and so did the negotiations. Attorney William Kunstler, known for his defense of the Chicago Seven, arrived at Wounded Knee to represent the leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Carrying fresh proposals in a brown briefcase, two Indian lawyers dashed back and forth in a Cadillac between the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Pine Ridge and the AIM fortress. A major sticking point was the Justice Department's threat to arrest any Indian militants leaving the trading post and confiscate their weapons as evidence. It was largely to carry out that threat that the Justice Department had kept its cordon around the area. At week's end the Justice Department backed down. In a sudden reversal of policy, it removed all roadblocks and withdrew all 300 U.S. marshals, FBI agents and local policemen. The Indians were free to leave--with their weapons.

AIM Leader Russell Means was jubilant. "We want to see headlines that say 'U.S. surrenders to Indians,' " he told newsmen. In fact, the Justice Department had done the only sensible thing. The wonder was not why its agents had suddenly withdrawn, but why they had not been ordered to do so earlier, to defuse a dangerous situation. At most, Justice had made a tactical retreat. It plans to convene a grand jury early this week to consider indictments, and a courtroom showdown seems inevitable. AIM leaders were not only resigned to that possibility, but almost appeared to relish it. Said Means: "Give us our day in court, and we'll take it."

The withdrawal of federal agents also did nothing to redress the underlying grievances that had brought the militants to Wounded Knee in the first place. Those remained to be thrashed out with officials from the Department of Interior, which runs the BIA. Rather than leave Wounded Knee, several AIM leaders claimed that they were planning to stay on there to meet with Interior officials this week.

Before it ended, the eleven-day siege of Wounded Knee had thoroughly disrupted the rest of the 2,400-sq.-mi. reservation. In the town of Pine Ridge, 20 miles southwest, the BIA office sent workers home and stopped distributing welfare checks.

Reported TIME Correspondent Richard Woodbury:

"The adults are idle, since virtually all business on the mammoth reservation has come to a halt. Families wanting to take in the action have come to Pine Ridge in the dilapidated cars with crunched fenders that are the Indians' trademark. Justice Department people, a few in coats and ties but many more in flak vests, baseball caps and heavy boots, come and go in the area of the BIA building. It is a reunion for many of the federal marshals, distinctive in their flag-bedecked blue jumpsuits. Across the street, on a dried mudbank, sit a line of solemn-faced Indians taking it all in."

In Wounded Knee itself, tensions rose and fell with events. Early in the week, both sides had seemed close to resolving their differences--until Russell Means' brother Bill was wounded in a firefight. When the car transporting him to the hospital was stopped at a roadblock, federal authorities discovered Molotov cocktails in the trunk and arrested the Indians. Incensed, Russell Means crammed his people into a small community hall the next morning to fire them up.

For all the rhetoric and emotion, however, the immediate issues seemed strangely vague and parochial. At the beginning of the crisis, Means had staked out vast demands: the return by the U.S. Government of territories in both Dakotas, Montana and Nebraska; the investigation of long-broken treaties and a full-scale probe by Congress of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But then Means shifted the main focus to his demand for the ouster of Sioux Tribal Council President Dick Wilson. That issue proved to be more slippery than the larger questions over which the battle was first joined.

Means, himself a Sioux, was asking the Department of the Interior to interfere in an intratribal Sioux affair, and thus turn back the clock on the recent Indian move for self-determination. On the face of it, he hardly seemed to have a case. Dick Wilson was duly elected by the Sioux, as was the 20-member council, which he heads. But AIM has accused Wilson--a mixed blood who was previously a plumber--of nepotism, political patronage and corruption in his administration. Reported TIME'S Woodbury: "Accounting is lax, and the considerable amount of money that passes through tribal hands, often for loosely defined programs, makes corruption almost a way of life in Indian government."

Even so, it is far from clear whether the rest of the Sioux are as unhappy as Means with Wilson's leadership. The Interior Department maintains that disputes among the Sioux are their own problem. As for Wilson, his tribal council urged that the Justice Department clear AIM militants off the reservation.

The repercussions of Wounded Knee have already spread far beyond the Black Hills of South Dakota. Awakened by ample TV coverage of the original seizure of Wounded Knee and enraged by the Government's seeming overreaction, other groups of Indians have taken up the cry of injustice. In Chicago, 40 Indians dressed in blankets and headdresses demonstrated in the offices of Senator Adlai Stevenson III. In Lumberton, N.C., Indians in a 40-car caravan drove for three consecutive nights through the downtown district, smashing windows with rocks. Even in faraway Maine. Passamaquoddy Indians in Pleasant Point heeded the call to arms and blockaded a state highway by burning tires. Their placards read: REMEMBER WOUNDED KNEE.

They were drawing on the memory of the Sioux massacre that first made the settlement infamous. But Wounded Knee II may soon be remembered too --as a turning point for the better in the fortunes of American Indians, or the beginning of a string of disruptive red power demonstrations in many parts of the country--or both.

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