Lost Bird of Wounded Knee : spirit of the Lakota / Reneé Sansom Flood.
Material type:
TextPublication details: New York : Scribner, [2014.]Description: 384 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 1476790752
- 9781476790756
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | Biography | Lost Bir F631 | Available | 33111008683019 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
This "powerful and chilling" ( Publishers Weekly ) account of a young girl taken from her native land in South Dakota after the 1890 massacre of Lakota men, women, and children describes the story of Lost Bird and the destruction of life for a Native American orphan being raised as a white child outside of her tribe.
When Lost Bird was found alive as an infant under the frozen body of her dead mother following the December 1980 massacre at Wounded Knee, a general from the U.S. Seventh Cavalry made the choice to adopt her. While the general, Leonard W. Colby, who would later become the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, swore to provide Lost Bird with a good life, his true meaning of adopting the Native American infant was to exploit her to bring in prominent tribes to his law firm.
After growing up a lonely child with no true meaning of belonging, Lost Bird lived a brief but harsh life filled with sexual abuse, painful marriages, tribe rejection, and prostitution before she died at young age of twenty-nine.
In the words of a former social worker that was instrumental in the moving of Lost Bird's remains from an unmarked grave in California to her homeland at Wounded Knee, Lost Bird of Wounded Knee is a remarkable biography examining the life of woman who became a symbol of the warring culture that entrapped her. Through the story of Lost Bird's life, Flood sheds light on the heartbreaking microcosm of the Native American children who have lost their heritage through adoption, social injustice, and war.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 351-376) and index.
In December 1890 the U.S. Seventh Cavalry massacred a band of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Miraculously, after a four-day blizzard, an infant was found alive under the frozen body of her dead mother. The dashing brigadier general (and future Assistant Attorney General of the United States) Leonard W. Colby kidnapped and then adopted the baby girl named Lost Bird (1890-1920) as a "living curio," and exploited her in order to attract prominent tribes as clients of his law practice. After the general's wife, the nationally known suffragist and newspaper editor Clara B. Colby, divorced her husband, she raised the Lakota child as a white girl in a well-meaning but disastrous attempt to provide a stable home. Lost Bird ran away to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and appeared in silent films and vaudeville. During her brief but unforgettable life she endured sexual abuse, violence, prostitution, and the rejection of her own tribe before dying at age twenty-nine on Valentine's Day. This remarkable biography examines the life of the woman who became a symbol of the warring cultures that entrapped her, and a heartbreaking microcosm of all those Native American children who lost their heritage through adoption, social injustice, and war.