| Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee | |
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| Author | 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 |
- This article is about the 1970 book by Dee Brown. For the 2007 film of the same name, see Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (film). "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" is also the title of songs by Buffy Sainte-Marie and The Waterboys and is also the name of albums by both Gila and Yoriyos.
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, and their displacement and slaughter 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, it 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.
Contents |
Content
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee expresses the American Indian perspective of the injustices and betrayals of the US government in its dealings with the Indians, which seemed continued efforts to destroy the culture, religion, and way of life of the people.
The book begins with the statement that Christopher Columbus had named the Native Americans "Indios" and with the differing dialects and accents of the Europeans to come, the word became known as Indians. Life as known to the indigenous people of the Americas would never be the same from the point of Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492.
Chapter by chapter, the book describes differing tribes of Native Americans and their relations to the US federal government during the years 1860-1890. It begins with the Navajos, the Apaches, and the other tribes of the Southwest US who were displaced as California and the surrounding areas were colonised. 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, and 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 onto Indian reservations, under perhaps the most violent circumstances. It culminates with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the deaths of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and the US slaughter of Sioux prisoners at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, an event generally considered to mark the end of the Indian Wars.
Success of the book
Time magazine reviewed the book saying:
- "In the last decade or so, after almost a century of saloon art and horse operas that romanticized Indian fighters and white settlers, Americans have been developing a reasonably acute sense of the injustices and humiliations suffered by the Indians. But the details of how the West was won are not really part of the American consciousness ... Dee Brown, Western historian and head librarian at the University of Illinois, now attempts to balance the account. With the zeal of an IRS investigator, he audits U.S. history's forgotten set of books. Compiled from old but rarely exploited sources plus a fresh look at dusty Government documents, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee tallies the broken promises and treaties, the provocations, massacres, discriminatory policies and condescending diplomacy."[1]
One strength of the book is its strong documentation of original sources, such as council records and firsthand descriptions.[2]
Remaining on best seller lists for over a year in hardback, it was still in print 35 years later. Translated into at least 17 languages, it has sold nearly four million copies.
Criticism
Despite its widespread acceptance by journalists and the general public, scholars were critical of the book, pointing out that much of the material, outside of direct quotations, was not sourced; 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 had been open 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).
Film adaptation
HBO Films produced a film version of the book for the HBO television network. The film stars Aidan Quinn, Adam Beach, Anna Paquin, and August Schellenberg as Sitting Bull. 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 Best Movie made for Television.
See also
References
- ^ Sheppard, R.Z. (1971-02-01). "The Forked-Tongue Syndrome". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909793,00.html. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
- ^ Momaday, N. Scott (1971-03-07). "A History of the Indians of the United States". New York Times: p. BR46. "It is first and foremost a compelling history of the Old West, distinguished ... because it is so carefully documented and designed."
- ^ Prucha, Francis Paul, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Review," The American Historical Review, vol. 77, no. 2, (Apr., 1972), pp. 589-590.
External links
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