What is also interesting to me in this discussion is a conversation that I
had with an Indian man about this very issue.  He came over to me and
said, sort of confidentially, that I should not buy the argument that
battlefield trophies should be returned.

But in this instance, what he was talking about was a 7th cavalry guidon
believed to have been lost by Custer's men during the Battle of the Little
Bighorn.  (He was in the 7th cav when he was in the Army.)  He thought
that it was possible that some Sioux people might claim this guidon as a
rightfully-taken trophy of war.  (It was given to an army officer's wife
late in the summer of 1876 by a frightened Sioux woman, who believed that
having it put her family in danger.)  I was not quick enough to ask him
what he thought about Wounded Knee material.

Interestingly, although I have heard a great deal about what the Wounded
Knee Survivor's Association would do with any objects from the battle/massacre
that were repatriated to them (unofficially, of course, since they don't
have standing under NAGPRA).  The consensus of opinion was that anything
would be reburied.  This past summer, we signed a curation agreement with
the Wounded Knee Survivor's Association for a Ghost Dance shirt that they
expect to repatriate from a museum in Scotland.  We are not sure that we
are going to get it, but the WKSA seemed to want it safe in some repository,
instead of in the ground.

Just thought I'd throw that out.

Claudia Nicholson
Curator of Collections
Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society
Pierre