Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18299 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Amazon.com Review
First published in 1970, this extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about the original inhabitants of their country. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending 30 years later with the massacre of Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, it tells how the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society. During these three decades, America's population doubled from 31 million to 62 million. Again and again, promises made to the Indians fell victim to the ruthlessness and greed of settlers pushing westward to make new lives. The Indians were herded off their ancestral lands into ever-shrinking reservations, and were starved and killed if they resisted. It is a truism that "history is written by the victors"; for the first time, this book described the opening of the West from the Indians' viewpoint. Accustomed to stereotypes of Indians as red savages, white Americans were shocked to read the reasoned eloquence of Indian leaders and learn of the bravery with which they and their peoples endured suffering. With meticulous research and in measured language overlaying brutal narrative, Dee Brown focused attention on a national disgrace. Still controversial but with many of its premises now accepted, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has sold 5 million copies around the world. Thirty years after it first broke onto the national conscience, it has lost none of its importance or emotional impact. --John Stevenson

From Library Journal
This 1970 volume greatly changed the view of pioneers' westward advancement. Based largely on primary source materials, this volume details how white settlers forced Indian tribes off the plains, often simply by killing them. Though Hollywood and penny dreadfuls portrayed Indians as red devils who launched unprovoked attacks on innocent homesteaders, Brown's research shows that the opposite is closer to the truth. The text is buttressed with numerous period photos. An essential purchase. (LJ 12/15/70)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The Washington Post
"Shattering, appalling, compelling...One wonders, reading this searing, heartbreaking book, who, indeed, were the savages."

Customer Reviews

A Shocking, Monumental Work
I have known about Dee Brown's classic history of the Western Indian Wars, for some thirty-five years. I can remember it being discussed, when I was in Middle School, between the years 1971 and 1974. Adults would mention it. You heard them talk about it on the radio, and on TV. This was about the time that Marlon Brando refused his Oscar for The Godfather, in protest of the treatment of Native Americans by the government.

It was very much talked about at the time.

Finally, years later, I picked up the book and began reading it. Not only was it in my list of books on American History that I want to read, but recently, it fits into my passion for understanding the history of my own family. My great-great grandmother, Mattie Clemons, was a Creek or Choctaw Indian from Alabama. She was very likely the illegitimate child of a white man named Clemons and an unidentified Native American woman. As a very young girl, perhaps three or for years old, I believe that she was forced west in the Trail of Tears. She spent her life hiding her Indian identity, seeking to blend in with the whites. This rejection of her Creek/Choctaw heritage was passed on to the next one or two generations, and only recently have we begun searching for answers.

For people like me, books like Bury My Heart provide some answers. Our ancestors, that lived only 150 years ago, have vanished into historical thin air. Records are few. Their names are not known. But thankfully, Dee Brown gives us more than perhaps we realize at first glance. I may not know the names, or the places, of my Native American ancestors. But I know more about their lifesyle, and what happened to them, than I do of even my Polish great-grandparents on the other side!

The book is shocking, saddening, sickening, enlightening, and riveting. It is peppered with occasional comic moments, mostly at the expense of the white idiots that dominated the formulation of Indian policy. Our heroes on one side of the American History tome: Jackson, Grant, Sheridan, Sherman, and Schurz, are transformed into near Nazi-like villains on the other.

This mixed bag of human nobility and shame makes the story of Wounded Knee authentically American.

I will never forget some of the book's moments: Of a visit to Chicago by one chief, who noted that the whites tended to go back and forth, hurriedly, like ants, with no particular purpose except to keep on the move; of Chief Joseph's comments about schools and church (he didn't want churches because all they did was taught you how to argue about God); of one chief handing to an Indian Bureau agent a handful of dirt, saying "Here, take this - it is all that's left of our land"; of the Indian Messiah that ushered in the Ghost Dance movement, and generated hope that the Indians would make a comeback; of the final massacre at Wounded Knee, where women and children were slaughtered along with the adult males.

The Indian Wars were a shameful chapter in American History. I would argue, with my grandfather, that our horrible treatment of the Indians surpassed even that of the African American slaves. Most likely both are on a par.

American policy was to make the Indians into white people. But those that did, by converting to Christianity and building houses and farms, still were forced onto reservations.

I would recommend this troubling book to any that have not yet read it. We still can, and should, learn much from our Native American brothers and sisters. And if we can have a hand in reviving all that was noble and decent in their culture, it would be a good thing.

COWBOYS AND INDIANS
Have you ever played cowbow and indians when you were a boy? I did and always wanted to be the cowboy. After reading this book I'd like to be a good cowboy not the ones portrayed here. Introduction-"This is not a cheerful book, but history has a way of intruding upon the present, and perhaps those who read it will have a clearer understanding of what the American Indian is, by knowing what he was. And if the readers of this book should ever chance to see the poverty, the hopelessness, and the squalor of a modern Indian reservation, they may find it possible to truly understand the reasons why. What adds a lot of value to this already exceptional book is the full page black & white pictures of Indians such as Geronimo,Sitting Bull-who killed Custard, Cochise, Lone Wolf, Red Cloud, Young-Man-Afraid-Of-His-Horses, White Horse,Little Crow,Crazy Bear, Little Big Man, and more. What is also added value is at the start of each chapter is a one page historical event calendar such as Chapter 17: 1880-June 1, population of United States is 50,155,783, 1881 Mar 4, James Garfield inaugurated as President, 1882-April 3, Jesse James shot and killed at St. Joseph, Missiouri. Sep 4, Edison switches on first commercial electric lights in New York Central Station. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn published. and much more! There were many different tribes of Indians such as Apaches, Sioux, Brules, Sans Arcs, Blackfoot Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahos, and more which the author effectively writes about. To me, the killing of women, little children, and babies was unfathomable. Who do you think did this? Read the book and find out! You won't be able to put it down. It took me one day to read it and I'm now going to Blockbuster to look for the DVD.

Highly recommend anything on or about Robert E. Howard the creator of Conan The Barbarian, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, and more! The Life & Art of REH, The Last of the Trunk, and Selected Letters.

Amazing
Makes me ashamed of what my people did. Why this book is not required reading for high school students is a tragic mystery. An entire section of American history that needs to be understood by all citizens.