L. T. Butterfield was one of the many photographers that converged on the Pine Ridge Reservation in January 1891 following the affair at Wounded Knee. The photographer from Chadron, Nebraska captured this image of a formation of cavalrymen of B Troop, 7th Cavalry, at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Jan. 18th, 1891. The troop commander, Captain Charles A. Varnum, appears to be the officer standing in the front of the formation. This particular copy was labeled “749. B. Troop, 7th Cavalry, Pine Ridge, S.D., Jan. 18th, 1891, which was in the battle of Wounded Knee Dec. 29th, 1890, and lost 7 men killed and 6 men wounded.” It is archived with the James W. Forsyth Papers, Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
About Sam Russell
I am a fifth-generation retired Army officer with three decades of commissioned service. I have been researching the frontier Army for over eighteen years and am interested in documenting the lives of the soldiers that participated in the battle of Wounded Knee using primarily official reports, diaries, letters, newspaper articles and other primary source documents.
My interest in Wounded Knee stems from my kinship to one of the principal participants. I am the great-great-grandson of Samuel M. Whitside, who was a major and battalion commander at the battle.
I welcome and encourage comments on posts and pages and am always interested in any new primary sources. If you have copies of letters, diaries, etc, from participants and are willing to share, please contact me.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are strictly my own, and should in no way be construed as official Army or U.S. Government positons.
Sam Russell
Army at Wounded Knee 