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:
“The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Being kissed on the back
of the knee is a moth
at the windowscreen....”
—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)