Wounded Knee Creek is a tributary of the White River, approximately 100 miles (160 km) long, in southwestern South Dakota in the United States. Its Lakota name is Chankwe Opi Wakpala.
It rises in the southeastern corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation along the state line with Nebraska and flows northwest. Site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, in which the 7th US Cavalry under Colonel James W. Forsyth massacred approximately 150 Sioux, mostly women and children. Towns in this region include Wounded Knee and Manderson. The Wounded Knee Creek flows NNW across the reservation and joins the White south of Badlands National Park.
Famous quotes containing the words wounded, knee and/or creek:
“There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sinsick soul.”
—African-American hymn-writer. “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” l. 1-2.
“little snails at the back
of the knee building bon-
fires ...”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)