e course of events leading up to the affair, two weeks before the shooting at Wounded Knee itself.)
Thus, the modern familiarity with the name of Wounded Knee is superficial in the extreme. The name has entered popular currency, along with perhaps a hazy notion that the Indians were the victims of whatever happened there, but it is a name and an image without dimension. In that respect, superficial awareness of Wounded Knee is very much of a piece with modern trends in the popular image of Indians. Indeed, in a broader respect, it is all too characteristic of the popular image of Indians throughout the history of European settlement in America.
White people have a long tradition of regarding Indians either as Noble Savages or as just plain savages. Although the image of Noble Savage, the currently fashionable one, is more appealing, they are equally dehumanizing. Each denies the Indians their full complexity and ambiguity as human beings, instead turning them into fantasy figures of the white imagination. Indeed, Hollywood films have tended to tre
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