What I tell you about the sorts not to take your life not to play with them.

They're not toys.

I know.

I'm a since a master ninja.

How can I help you?

I have 18 73 Winchester.

Oh, sweet.

It was from the Battle of Wounded Knee and I got the documents to prove it.

Really?

Yeah.

I mean, it's pretty significant history.

What's the battle of Wounded Knee?

The battle of wounded need are the massacre of wounded E because that's basically it was It was the winter of 18 90 in South Dakota.

Lakota Indians were camped out next to a river Theseventy.

Calvary was going to disarm them.

They went to the camp.

One of the Indians did not want to give up his gun.

Somewhere a shot rang out.

The seventh Calvary started shooting like crazy.

Basically, that is, they started just massacring everybody.

Um, this was the last, I think major conflict with American Indians.

The wounded knee massacre was a huge screw up by the U.

S.

Army.

Most of the Native Americans that were killed were not even armed, including women and Children.

And it's important in history because this was basically the end of the Indian Wars, which had been going on since Columbus landed here.

How much you looking to get out of it?

I wouldn't take less than 60,000.

Whoa.

I just want everybody to look at it.

I just want to make sure this was actually from the Battle of Wounded Knee.

You have paperwork here.

I just want to make sure everything drives correctly.

All right.

Yep.

Winchesters were popular with Native Americans for the same reasons they were popular with whites because they were extremely rare, viable, extremely powerful.

And it was just a really great gun.

And most of these guns, they were just traded for correct.

Well, there was even a time when the United States military actively sought toe arm Native Americans and they would obviously do so it tribes that were on good terms with the government and also some of them were obviously taken in battle.

So the Native Americans had guns for a long time, and the wounded knee massacre was really kind of the last great event of the 19th centuries.

Indian wars.

A really terrible moment in the history of the American West.

The massacre at Wounded Knee, Unfortunately, was a time when attitudes toward Native Americans were still quite negative.

But this was a moment when things started to shift somewhat more sympathetically towards Native Americans.

If we can tie it directly to the wounded Knee Massacre, the seventh Calvary, the significance of the gun increases dramatically.

It's much more than your standard 73 carbine.

Well, let's take a look and see what we got here.

So what we have here is the unsolvable ordinance stores.

Basically, it's 1/19 century Excel work sheet.

I mean, it's a sheet that's telling what they have, the serial numbers, the condition and what they were going to do with it.

Colonel James Foresight.

He was the commander of the Seventh Calvary, so that makes sense.

January 3 18 91.

Now, what's interesting about that particular day after the battle took place on December 29th the weather was terrible as a result of a snowstorm.

It wasn't until several days later that the Seventh Cavalry was able to go back to the battle site and actively pick up and collect any weapons that had been discarded.

A few of the other names down here with side.

He was a major.

He was the commander of the first squadron.

So most of what we're seeing here matches up.

I mean, this is the names we should see.

These are the dates that we should see.

So on here, it's listing this gun.

Can you show me that?

The 6 31?

I think that's this 6 31 Let's take a look here.

Okay?

And then the serial number, it's, you know, it's his 50 for 23 gonna Winchester 73.

Car by 504 to 3.

All right, So you have some really good paperwork here.

So now the one thing we don't have in any of this is wounded knee.

Those two words are missing from everything we have on here.

But given all of the information that we have, the two individuals, the dates on it, I think we could make the assumption that this gun was taken in the aftermath of the wounded knee massacre.

That's what I want to hear.

Aren't you gonna put a price on it?

Well, I work in a museum.

I'm not an appraiser, so I'm not gonna put a financial value on here.

I was kind of hoping that you'd probably say it was worth a couple 100,000 and then I could say, Well, give me 60%.

I'm sure you were all right.

I've convinced it's from the massacre.

Wounded knee.

Let's talk about your price.

You won't wait too much.

You just don't get that kind of money for a gun unless there is something very, very special.

And it's associated with an individual.

I'd give you, like, 14,000 bucks for it.

If you put this in auction, you will get right around that number.

I got 12,000.

12,000 of the gun.

So what's the lowest number?

You go?

I go 50.

Obviously, we're not gonna do any business.

Check around.

Like I said, I really am being completely sincere with you.

I believe you.

All right.

Have a nice day.

Thank you very much.

This'll guy is off his rocker if he thinks I will pay 50 grand for that gun.

Plain and simple, hopefully he checks around town, gets a lot of prices and comes crawling right back to me.