They dug a large trench on the hill where the Hotchkiss guns had been deployed. Into it they tossed dozens of corpses. The contractor got two dollars a body, and the soldiers jumped in to tramp down the dead. They buried our people the same way we bury our horses. ‒Dewey Beard

A group of civilians was hired to bury the Lakota bodies that remained at Wounded Knee. The interment took two days, January 3-4, 1891. The burial party dug a trench 6 feet wide, 72 feet long and 5 feet deep. The bodies were piled into this mass grave atop the hill overlooking the massacre site. This is the fenced-in grave that is at the site today.