| Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Dee Brown |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | United States History, Native Americans |
| Publisher | New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston |
| Publication date | 1970 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 487 |
| ISBN | 0030853222 |
| OCLC Number | 110210 |
| Dewey Decimal | 970.5 |
| LC Classification | E81 .B75 1971 |
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by American writer Dee Brown is a history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century. He describes the people's displacement through forced relocations and years of warfare waged by the United States federal government. It was first published in 1970 to generally strong reviews, although scholars criticized it on several grounds. Published at a time of increasing American Indian activism, the book was on the bestseller list for more than a year. Translated into 17 languages, the book has never gone out of print.
The title is taken from the final phrase of a 20th-century poem titled "American Names" by Stephen Vincent Benet. The poem is not about the Indian Wars. The full quotation, "I shall not be here/I shall rise and pass/Bury my heart at Wounded Knee," appears at the beginning of Brown's book. Although Benet's poem is not about the plight of native Americans, Wounded Knee, (a village on a reservation in South Dakota) was the location of last major confrontation between the U.S. Army and American Indians. The event is known formally as the Wounded Knee Massacre, as more than 150, largely unarmed, Sioux men, women, and children were killed that day.
Contents |
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee expresses an American Indian perspective of the injustices and betrayals of the US government. Brown views the government's dealings as continued efforts to destroy the culture, religion, and way of life of Native American peoples.
He opens noting that the explorer Christopher Columbus named the Native Americans Indios because of his search for the East Indies. Given the many differing dialects and languages of succeeding European colonists, the term in English became Indians. Life as known to the indigenous people of the Americas would never be the same after Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492.
Brown describes different tribes of Native Americans and their relations to the US federal government during the years 1860-1890. He begins with the Navajo, the Apache, and the other tribes of the American Southwest who were displaced as California and the surrounding areas were colonized by European Americans. Brown chronicles the changing and sometimes conflicting attitudes both of US authorities, such as General Custer, and Indian chiefs, particularly Geronimo, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. He describes the Indian chiefs' attempts to save their peoples, by peace, war, or retreat.
The later part of the book focuses primarily on the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes of the North American Plains. They were among the last to be moved on to Indian reservations. It culminates with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the deaths of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and the US Army's killing of mostly unarmed Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, an event generally considered to mark the end of the Indian Wars.
Time magazine reviewed the book saying:
The Pulitzer-Prize winning author N. Scott Momaday noted the book contains strong documentation of original sources, such as council records and firsthand descriptions.[2]
Remaining on bestseller lists for over a year following its release in hardback, the book remains in print 40 years later. Translated into at least 17 languages, it has sold nearly four million copies.
Despite the book's widespread acceptance by journalists and the general public, scholars such as Francis Paul Prucha criticized it for lacking sources for much of the material, except for direct quotations; he said that content was selected to present a particular point of view, rather than to be balanced; and that the narrative of government-Indian relations suffered from not being placed within the perspective of what else was occurring within the government and the country at the time.[3]
Brown was candid about his intention to present the history of the settlement of the West from the point of view of the Indians, "its victims," as he wrote. He noted, "Americans who have always looked westward when reading about this period should read this book facing eastward." (p. xvi)
HBO Films produced a film version – by the same title – of the book for the HBO television network. The film stars Aidan Quinn, Adam Beach, Anna Paquin, and August Schellenberg as Sitting Bull, and a cameo appearance by actor and former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson as President Grant. The film debuted on the HBO television network Sunday, May 27, 2007. While the film covers only the last two chapters of Brown’s book, it received many Emmy nominations and went on to win one for Best Movie made for Television.