an Indian history of the American West

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee

Dee Alexander Brown

Documents and personal narratives record the experiences of Native Americans during the nineteenth century.

An Indian History of the American West

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Nick Perronteau

** spoiler alert **
           4.5/5
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Such a unique structure of almost bullet pointed vignettes. Most novels would fail trying to utilize this tactic, but ‘Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee’ benefits (if that can even be used here) with its heavy subject matter.

Black Elk giving the final words is so heartbreaking to me. The summit of Black Elk is among one of my favorite hikes of all time, but to have scaled it while living this timeline and now having his words etched into my conscience, after enduring these stories… It leaves me in such an odd position, mentally.

This is a well-written and readable history of a subset of Native American groups and focuses on the specific time period between 1860 to 1890. It's a heartbreaking and important set of events to know, and this book is a solid introduction to Native history.

Next up is Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer. 

Ashlyn

This is a well-written and readable history of a subset of Native American groups and focuses on the specific time period between 1860 to 1890. It's a heartbreaking and important set of events to know, and this book is a solid introduction to Native history.

Next up is Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer. 

Bill Mazza

Jeni Enjaian

This book is not a work of history, it is a work of propaganda. Only a few pages in I seriously considered abandoning this book, something I rarely do. (I think I have done than less than 10 times in my life.) I decided to keep reading because it would be a quick read and another book to add to my "read" list. I wrote down a whole host of problems with this book but this book was so bad it almost feels not worth it to waste the time.
I'll summarize briefly. Brown has incredibly bias, limited original text, far too many quotes and too few original sources. For a work of history to have those "qualifications," that, in my opinion, disqualifies it from calling itself a work of history.
I do not recommend this book at all.

Dee Brown

A true classic of American history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell in their won words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, this book changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.

Julie Berman

Bryan Alexander

I have seen this book for much of my library- and bookstore-going life, and only read into a chapter or so. By chance my local public library had an ebook available. Two very long flights lay ahead for me this month, and so this was a perfect fit.

Bury My Heart is a famous book, one I don't need to review in full here. You can grab all kinds of reviews and summaries here in Goodreads. Let me just mention some features which impressed or especially effected me.

Unsurprisingly, this is an immensely powerful, moving, and enraging book. I knew most of the history before reading it here, but Dee Brown had a genius for assembling a lot of research into a compressed, rich, and engaging narrative. 

Bury has many powerful passages, like the awful scene of Black Kettle waving a big, presidential American flag in a vain effort to stop the Sand Creek Massacre (1864; 87-88), or the brutal historical irony of the Nez Perces saving Lewis and Clark's expedition, only to be wiped out in almost the same spot (316ff), or the way the Wounded Knee "battle" begins eerily, tragically like the Arthurian battle of Camlann. Then there's this introduction to the book's themes:
During the following thirty years these leaders and many more would enter history and legend. Their names would become as well known as those of the men who tried to destroy them. Most of them, young and old, would be driven into the ground long before the symbolic end of Indian freedom came at Wounded Knee in December, 1890. Now, a century later, in an age without heroes, they are perhaps the most heroic of all Americans. (12-13)

I didn't know that some thinking scalping was initially a European, not native American, practice (26).

I like Dee's habit of naming United States officials by their native American nicknames.

An interesting link to anti-black racism is the story of Cheyenne Lean Bear's interaction with a white couple. The native American man "noticed a bright shiny ring worn by an officer's wife. Impulsively he took hold of the woman's hand to look at her ring." We can imagine many ways for the husband to respond, but he did this: "The woman's husband rushed up and slashed Lean Bear with a big whip." I'm reminded of the deep, nearly hysterical obsession many white people had - some still have - with black men's supposedly dangerous sexuality. (72)

Ely Parker, nee Hasanoanda, is one fascinating person. First native American to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

As most of Wounded Knee is about the sustained, extensive, and ultimately successful United States drive to quash native nations, sometimes led by psychopaths and/or genocidal freaks, it does portray exceptional people on the US side. There's Edward Wynkoop, who comes to see native Americans as "superior beings... the representatives of a race that I heretofore looked upon without exception as being cruel, treacherous, and bloodthirsty" (77). Ulysses Grant appears to be one of the few Washington residents who actually tried to be humane to native Americans . Likewise I appreciated learning that the natives won Red Cloud's War (1866-1868), when most of Bury is a string of defeats.

Let me end with one of Brown's great chapter closers: Except for a small strip of territory along the southwest corner - where a small band of Southern Utes was allowed to live - Colorado was swept clean of Indians. Cheyenns and Arapaho, Kiowa and Comanche, Jicarilla and Ute - they had all known its mountains and plains, but now no trace of them remained but their names on the white man's land. (389)

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee an Indian history of the American West

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