Ameritrekking Adventures: Visiting Wounded Knee in South Dakota: Trek, #1.1

By Joseph G. Whelan

This booklet is a sample of a full-length book.  It is Chapter 8 in Ameritrekking and Highpointing: Discovering America the Beautiful.  If you already have that book, don't buy this booklet.

This booklet is about the author's 1995 visit to Wounded Knee in South Dakota, the site of a massacre of Native Americans in 1890.  You can travel vicariously to that infamous place and sample the writing at the same time.

The main book resulted from an 8,000-mile, weeks-long road trip.  Along the way the author discovered parks, battlefields, and highpoints, plus much more while driving through 23 states.

Over the years Joseph Whelan drove more than 100,000 miles and spent over a year on the road.  He went to many strange and wonderful places and continues to travel and write.  Try this short sample and join the adventure today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Whelan
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393333883

Book preview

Ameritrekking Adventures

Visiting Wounded Knee in South Dakota

By

Joseph G. Whelan

Copyright © 2017 by Joseph G. Whelan

All rights reserved.

[T]he draw in which the Indian camp was set looked like a sunken Vesuvius.

--Will Cressey

(On volume of gunfire at Wounded Knee

29 December 1890)

Table of Contents

1: What’s It All About?

2: All Hell Broke Loose

3: More to Explore

1: What’s It All About?

We are all citizens of history.

--Clifton Paul Fadiman

(1904-1999)

Hello!  If you’re new to the Ameritrekking and Highpointing series of books and booklets, Welcome!  If you and I have met before, however indirectly, Welcome Back!

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I’ll explain what this little booklet is all about in just a moment but first I wish to be completely upfront and make the following …

!!!!! FULL DISCLOSURE !!!!!

… which is that this short story is taken essentially word for word from a full-length book entitled Ameritrekking and Highpointing: Discovering America the Beautiful.  Therefore, if you already have that book, there is no need to buy this booklet.

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And now, here are quick explanations of Ameritrekking and highpointing. What are those things? What’s it all about?

Ameritrekking is a word I made up.  It began in 1995 when my employer told me to start using up months of accumulated vacation time.  I talked my way into three weeks all at once.  I used the time to see the country by car.  This became the first book in the series, Ameritrekking and Highpointing: Discovering America the Beautiful.  Along the way I realized that something above and beyond a long vacation was happening.  That something I eventually called Ameritrekking.  The next year I took another three-week trip and a pattern was established.  It’s been over 20 years now and I’m still rolling around.  So far I’ve driven over 100,000 miles and been to all of the states in the Lower Forty-Eight.  I’ve spent over twelve