The animosity between Russell C. Means, the top AIM leader at the embattled village, and Wilson extends back to early 1972. The 33-year-old Means, a full-blooded Oglala Sioux born on the Pine Ridge reservation but raised in Cleveland, Ohio, returned to the reservation last year and took up residence. After AIM occupied the BIA building in Washington last November, Wilson denounced the takeover, and said that he would bar AIM from Pine Ridge.

Wilson, a stocky mixed-blood with close cropped hair, was familiar with AIM's tactics. In March 1972, AIM and 2000 supporters gathered in Gordon, Neb., to protest the violent death of Raymond Yellow Thunder. A splinter group headed to Wounded Knee, determined to use the historic site for a symbolic demonstration.

Unknown to Wilson, or the Federal government, AIM had set its sights on Wounded Knee long before it took over the village on February 27. Justice Department "intelligence reports" on AIM's next move indicated that the militants would seize the reservation's BIA office in Pine Ridge, 17 miles southwest of Wounded Knee.

In anticipation of a takeover, Federal marshals sandbagged BIA headquarters. While the marshals busied themselves fortifying the building, AIM strolled past them into Wounded Knee.

Carter Camp, one of the top AIM leaders, recalled the takeover with a smile. "I led three cars past 'Fort Wilson' [the fortified BIA building]," Camp, a tall, big-boned Oklahoma Cherokee, said. "We arrived about 45 minutes before the caravan. We took a pickup truck that belonged to Jack Czywczynski, the operator of the museum, and placed it in the road for a roadblock."

Later that night, Camp said, Czywcznski snuck away from his house (where he was being held hostage), and left the village in his pickup. "He stole his own pickup," Camp chuckled. "He took that pickup, deserted his family. No Indian would desert his family."

When it entered the tiny hamlet, AIM seized the trading post and the museum, and took 11 hostages. The hostages included Czywcznski, his family, and the Gildersleeves, owners of the trading post.

AIM released the hostages two days after the occupation began. The militants armed themselves with guns from the trading post, adding to the weapons they had brought with them. Although the next few weeks would be tense, and Means would declare himself ready to die, AIM found itself in control of little more than a symbolic plot of ground.

Wounded Knee may be short on buildings, but it is long on symbolism. The tiny hamlet was the site of the 1890 massacre, when the U.S. cavalry slaughtered over 200 Indians. The Indians killed in this battle are buried in a mass grave, located behind the Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

On the grave, a stone marker commemorates the dead Indians. To the white man, the mass grave is a tourist attraction, but to the Indian, it represents a culture that has almost faded away.

The 1890 massacre seems ingrained into the dusty hills that surround Wounded Knee. The heroes of that incident-Red Cloud, Big Foot, and Sitting Bull-mean as much to the young Oglalas as they did to their grandfathers.

A series of complex events led to the 1890 massacre. Sitting Bull, after a long career of battling the white man, had retired to Standing Rock on the Pine Ridge reservation. In the summer of 1890, the "Ghost Dance" came to the Pine Ridge reservation. Wokova, a Paiute, originated the ritual, and many Indians considered him to be the Messiah.

The Ghost Dance swept across the reservation. Indian disciples came to Pine Ridge to teach the dance, and although Sitting Bull did not believe in the religion, he thought that depriving his people of belief in the Messiah would be more harmful than the dance.

Hundreds of Indians adopted the dance, which supposedly revived dead Indian heroes and drove white men from the Indian lands. The U.S. government became alarmed at the spreading craze, and outlawed the dance.

But the dancing continued. In November, the BIA ordered its agents to arrest Sitting Bull. Indian police arrived at the tepee of the great Sioux chief, and in a disputed incident, a U.S. corporal shot Sitting Bull, while they were surrounded by ghost dancers.