On the Trail to Wounded Knee: The Big Foot Memorial Ride Review

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(More customer reviews)Guy Le Querrec's On The Trail To Wounded Knee: The Big Foot Memorial Ride is an impressive photographic memorial of one of the most brutal and tragic massacres of Native Americans in recorded American history. In 1990, the one hundredth anniversary of the long journey and eventual slaughter of Chief Big Foot and most of his tribe, members of the Sioux nation retraced the journey in honor of those who suffered and died. Photographer Guy Le Querrec followed the trail with them, and captured these powerful black-and-white images. Vignettes and quotes from history are interspersed with this moving, visual testimony of the long forced march that has since become a symbol of American genocide.

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In 1890, after the assassination of Sitting Bull, his friend, Chief Big Foot-denounced as an agitator by the government-decided to seek refuge with another Sioux chief, Red Cloud. Big Foot, seventy years old and suffering from pneumonia, gathered his tribe of mostly women, children, and the elderly, and set out for the long journey that would take them to Pine Ridge. Just twenty miles short of their destination, federal soldiers captured Big Foot and his followers, imprisoning them at Wounded Knee. The next day, December 29, the 7th Cavalry exterminated every man, woman, and child. More than 180 Sioux died there that day.In 1986, to honor what remains the symbol of the Indian genocide, members of the Sioux nation vowed to follow the trail of their ancestors. On their last journey in 1990, the 100th anniversary of the massacre, photographer Guy Le Querrec followed the trail with them. During bitter cold December weather, with temperatures below zero for days on end, Le Querrec shot these gritty, yet compelling images of the Lakota Sioux horsemen. In the words of Jim Harrison, Le Querrec has "the splendid but ruthless eye of the tragedian." On the Trail to Wounded Knee is both a tribute to the massacred Lakota Sioux peoples and a cry for justice, and as Harrison observes, "these photographs will light a fire in your spirit, a fire which will last forever, if you are a human being worthy of this name." (10 x 13, 128 pages, b&w photos)

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