On December 28, 1890, 500 well-armed soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry surrounded a tepee camp of 350 Lakota prisoners of war at Wounded Knee Creek S.D. During a search for weapons the next morning, a Lakota accidentally discharged his rifle. Reacting with close-range volleys of rifle and artillery fire soldiers killed an estimated 250 Lakota men, Women, and children.
Four days later an infant was found alive in a snow bank beneath the frozen body of her mother named Zintkala Nuni (Lost Bird), the child became
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General Leonard Colby's trophy of war.
Lost Bird attended All Saints School for girls in Sioux Falls in 1904. She made steady progress under Headmistress Helen Peabody, but because her adopted father failed to pay her tuition, she was unable to return for a second year.
Raised in non-Indian society but always drawn toward her Lakota heritage. Lost Bird lived a brief, turbulent life. She died in 1920 in California and was buried there. In 1991 her remains were repatriated and buried at the Wounded Knee massacre site.
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