Photo: Guns Used at Wounded Knee Auctioned

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A Dallas-based auction house sold off more than 100 items from Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, including three cavalry guns uses in the Wounded Knee Massacre.

The collection, containing some 400 items belonging to Paul Rathbun of Colorado, went on the auction block June 11. It included the guns, letters, pipes, photographs, other weapons, beadwork, and even a scalp lock. According to the Associated Press, Rathbun’s family collected the items when they owned a general store near Pine Ridge.

“I’m just a regular person; I don’t have a vault or really I guess I don’t have the means to care for it the way it should be,” Rathbun told the AP. “And there’s, of course, a bit of an economic factor.”

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This image was featured in this week’s Indian Country Today Media Network newsletter.