Customer Reviews

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a piece of History that a lot of people don't know about.
It's well written, captivating & timeless.
I recommend it to anyone interested in little known US history.

This book recounts the trials and tribulations that the indigenous people have gone through, and continues to go through to this day. Being of Native descent, I found it hard with the history lessons taught in schools. A little too one-sided? I think not. Remember, history is HIS story -- the Europeans' version of what truly happened centuries ago. It has taken too long for us to have our story told. The indigenous people were keepers of the land, and never claimed to own the land. We never had any concept of the value of gold. We lived with the land and were one with it. Was it right to drive them from their homes? To have hundreds of men, women and children die during their walk of the Trail of Tears? I clearly do not remember any of this being taught in history class. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. Read it with an open mind and heart and understand history as it truly was! It is not one-sided in any sense of the phrase. Being one-sided is not telling the whole truth!

I read this book way back in 1977 when I was a student. I'm half English and knew little of American History. It was a very profound read then and I felt an enormous amount of sympathy in reading it for a culture that was doomed by the arrival of Europeans. I have looked at some of the reviews and those that criticise it seem to dislike the one-sided approach that portray's Indians as Good and White man as Bad. To them I would point out that for a long time we have had the image of Indians as Bad thrust at us by movies and TV shows. I don't think I'm wrong in believing that there was already a stereotype that potrayed Indians as murderous savages, and that is from looking at it in England. So, I thinks it's ok to have something that discriminates so postively in favour of a race that was vilified at so many levels. However, nobody should rely on just one source as the whole story.

If you really care, you will read more than one book and find out as much as possible. I'm sure doing so will show that as with everything it is never a simplisitc black and white picture, there is always good and bad on sides and there is always something right and wrong in both too.

Whatever your views, I think it would be hard to deny that their culture and race was overwhelmed and almost completely destroyed by the immigration of Europeans. We will never know if the cultures could have co-existed peacefully and the fact they didn't probably proves they couldn't.

That doesn't make either side right or wrong. It does show that we find it easier to go to war with foreign cultures than embrace them and that has been a fact throughout history. It seems that in human relations one side has to be defeated and broken rather than respected and equal.

The book made me sad way back then when I was young and very idealistic. Today I have had a lot of reality woven into my views but I still believe in ideals and I haven't forgotten how I felt when I read the book. However it seems that nations, cultures, races and religions still don't know how to live in peace.

My mother is Armenian and my granparent were refugees from Turkey in 1914, I learnt of their history first hand. My family lived in Cyprus when the island experienced war and division. What I have seen and learnt is that we all lose through war and hatred. What I don't understand is how we can read and learn about the past and then repeat it so often again.

I think that this is a very important book in that documents the history of the native americans in the US. It is heartbreaking to read the same story over and over of broken promises and treaties that lead to the destruction of various indian tribes. But as far as reading goes it does get a little repetitious as each tribe has almost the same story of betrayal. Would have liked to known a little more about some of the leaders of the tribes.

I usually read books for enjoyment and to learn something; didn't enjoy this one very much but I sure did learn a lot. It's the sad and depressing story of what happened to the American Indians during the westward expansion between 1860 and 1890. Each of the 19 chapters could stand alone as a tale of how some Indian tribe was lied to, cheated, abused, or even worse, massacered. I was struck by the never ending courage, hope and patience of the Indians. Despite years of broken treaties and mistreatment at the hands of the U.S government and land grabbing citizens, they still dreamed of a day when they could coexist peacefully with white men. They just wanted to be left alone, on land that belonged to them.
Read this book to get a different perspective on what really happened during that time, but don't expect to feel good after you're done.

Anyone interested in history should read this book. It is full of extremely poignant stories, each of which would make for a great film or TV mini-series. While it sometimes degnerates into polemic, the facts speak so loudly for themselves that they cannot be ignored.

I gave this book as a gift to my wife when she was about to emigrate to the US, more than ten years ago. She gobbled it up and we still discuss it.

When I read this book, I wanted to learn more, perhaps read an entire history, about every story or chapter. THere are fascinating characters that crop up, only to abruptly disappear, and many threads left uncovered. This is not a criticism, as it is a survey, but it was frustrating.

You will not forget this book. Get it.

Watched the History Channel lately? How about TLC or Discovery? For that matter, read any history books recently?

Forget it all.

It took about 400 pages, but Dee Brown has shown me that what I know of American history is bunk. This is the truth behind our heritage and our country.

Here is the story of the systematic destruction of an entire people. Thousands and thousands of lives lost to lies, racism, hate, greed, and stupidity. All so the U-S could have more and more and more land. The house you live in is built on land won at the cost of an Indian tribe. Chilling to say the least.

Brown's writing is so objective it feels nearly disconnected and remote. And for good reason. You can decide for yourself how horrible the truth is. Brown doesn't need to garnish the facts with commentary.

Highly recommended, and nearly perfect. I only wish the book included map platelets so I could more easily understand the many battles, tribal exoduses, treaty promises, etc.

This is a book that should make any human reader very angry and very sad. It is the history of the Western Native Americans (American in the strict sense of the word, not North American) and their encounters with "white" Americans. The book recounts the stories of numerous tribes and numerous chiefs, including: Sitting Bull, Cochise, Crazy Heart, Geronimo, and many others.

Sadly, the stories of all the bands follow a familiar, tragic plot.

1- Natives living free in their territory.
2- White people realize there's something of value (typically gold or silver) in that territory.
3- They want to build roads there.
4- The natives, wanting to avoid a fight, allow it.
5- White squatters, ranchers, miners, and land owners start illegally encroaching onto the native land. The US government does nothing about this illegal activity (at the Federal level- at the State and local levels, they often encourage it!).
6- The natives have had enough and drive out some squatters. The squatters then yell about crazy, dangerous Indians, calling for the US Army to come in.
7- They generally give the Natives a chance to sign a new, crappy, treaty that drastically reduces their land claims. Or they skip to #9 and tell them to move to a new reservation or be wiped out.
8- The US Army often massacres a village of natives (including the elderly, women, children, and yes, infants) to get the ball rolling.
9- The natives are then offered a new, really crappy piece of land that nobody (including them) wants.
10- Many natives, especially the young men, refuse that crappy deal. They fight back. They almost always lose. Other than Little Big Horn and a couple of other fights, the natives lack of good weapons (often bows vs. good guns/cannons) and tactics (a handful of foolish young men would leave the group and raid a US group for horses before an attack, spoiling the crucial element of surprise) means that even when the numbers are on their side, the battles go poorly for them.
11- After this (often with #8 now if it hasn't happened yet), they come back to sign a peace agreement for that crappy deal. Only now it's generally a worse deal.
12- That deal is broken, because it's still too generous, so the cycle repeats itself until the natives are either dead or completely crushed and demoralized (and heavily depopulated). If the process stalls, white people deliberately provoke the Indians into fighting them, triggering the Army's involvement and a new, poorer deal. Or they just make up lies about what the Indians are doing to get the same result.
13- Any good white person involved with the Indians (usually someone who fought them, but learned to respect them over time) is eventually tarred, feathered, and driven out of the government or Army by the greed of the majority of the whites. He's ruining a good thing! Can't let "morals" get in the way of money, not in the US!
14- When one group is dealt with, the next in line is dealt with. They can't believe the same thing will happen to them, they're powerless to stop it, and the US Army is ironically often helped by mercenary natives from the crushed tribes.

As mentioned, this story repeats itself over and over again. The natives are trying to hold on to their land with virtually no power against an unstoppable juggernaut. They repeatedly take crappy deals, probably because they (rightly) think that's the best they can get. Then that deal is just tossed aside as soon as enough white greed focuses on it, and a newer, crappier deal is given to them. Frankly, I can't blame them for fighting back and of the choice some made to die free rather than probably die a poor, displaced shell of what they once were. What an awful choice to have to make.

Still, there are enough bright spots of hope, courage, and tenacity on both sides to make this book not 100% depressing. If you want to draw something positive from it (besides the lesson it tells about colonization), it's that not everyone is bad, and the efforts of good men (mostly men) can make a difference, if only for a while.

As a Canadian, I can be proud that we weren't as bad to our Natives. We mainly skipped step #8! A brief hooray for us! Because for the rest of the steps we were just about as bad as the US, including pressuring Sitting Bull to return to the US with his tribe so they could be killed, arrested then murdered, or sent to live on a crappy piece of land. This might sound like a really horrible review, but truly, the "colonization" of the Americas is one of the blackest periods of history. As such, it should be required reading for everyone.

This book is a classic and a big inspiration for my own work on the Lakota Sioux and Wounded Knee: They Never Surrendered: The Lakota Sioux Band That Stayed in Canada.

There are three books you need to read if you want to understand the Native American experience or the American experience from Native American eyes. The first is Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. The second is Black Elk Speaks by John Niehardt. The third is Neither Wolf nor Dog by Kent Nerburn. If we could get every American to read these three books we would begin to heal the wounds of our history.