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

Dee Brown

Macmillan, May 15, 2007 - History - 481 pages

Immediately recognized as a revelatory and enormously controversial book since its first publication in 1971, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is universally recognized as one of those rare books that forever changes the way its subject is perceived. Now repackaged with a new introduction from bestselling author Hampton Sides to coincide with a major HBO dramatic film of the book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's classic, eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold over four million copies in multiple editions and has been translated into seventeen languages.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the series of battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them and their people demoralized and decimated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was won, and lost. It tells a story that should not be forgotten, and so must be retold from time to time.

What people are saying

User Review -

If you would like to understand American foreign policy read this.

User Review -

I continue to be amazed at how much impact Americans attribute to this book. Why did it take Dee Brown's Bury My Heart finally to accept a reality that had been there all along? Yes, it is a meticulously documented history of the genocide of Native Americans, characterized by lies, distortion and the bloodlust that white soldiers had acquired particularly, though not exclusively, thanks to the civil war. But why was this information news in the early seventies when the book came out? Except for the comprehensiveness and, perhaps some of the details, there is little in this book that I didn't read as a boy in Germany during the early sixties . Way back then, I was shocked at General Sheridan's statement that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." Only later I learned that some of the good people of Wyoming had named a town after him .
Dee Brown's most important contribution, rather than merely weaving the many details into a cohesive narrative, may have been that the book, due to its comprehensiveness, turned out to be a whole lot more unsettling than the story of one tribe alone could have been.Still, the information had been collected in smaller compilatioms and had been available for a long time. I'm just not so sure that "Manifest Destiny" didn't finally lose its grip on the American conscousness unti the publication of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
As an academic work in history, we should not read it uncritically. Not all fact adduced by Brown, regardless of whom they may cast a bad or good light on a person are undisputed. In this book, Brown certainly spends more intensity on the effort to show how confliced some of the Indian leaders themselves were. Brown is rather quick in depicting Indians who went out on raids of white people's settlements as going against the orders of the chief. Be that as it may, they were still of the same tribes, and knew what was expected from them.
I hate to place a cathartic book on an "essential reading list." Let's just say that if you read only one cathartic book over the next little while, this one could be it. 

Contents

• Their Manners Are Decorous and Praiseworthy: 1
• The Long Walk of the Navahos: 13
• CHAPTER TWO 1 Manuelito: 17
• Juanita wife of Manuelito: 19
• Navaho warrior of the 1860s: 35
• Little Crows War: 37
• CHAPTER THREE 4 Little Crow: 41
• Big Eagle: 49
• War Comes to the Cheyennes: 67
• CHAPTER FOUR 6 Cheyenne and Arapaho Chiefs in Denver: 81
• Little Raven: 85
• George Bent and his wife Magpie: 93
• Edmond Guerrier: 95
• Powder River Invasion: 103
• CHAPTER FIVE 10 Red Cloud: 109
• Red Clouds War: 121
• CHAPTER SIX 11 Spotted Tail: 127
• The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian: 147
• CHAPTER SEVEN 12 Roman Nose: 155
• Tosawi: 171
• The Rise and Fall of Donehogawa: 175
• CHAPTER EIGHT 14 Donehogawa Ely Parker: 176
• Cochise and the Apache Guerrillas: 191
• CHAPTER NINE 15 Cochise: 195
• Eskiminzin: 203
• The Ordeal of Captain Jack: 219
• CHAPTER TEN 17 Captain Jack: 223
• The War to Save the Buffalo: 241
• CHAPTER ELEVEN 18 Satanta: 245
• Lone Wolf: 247
• Kicking Bird: 251
• Ten Bears: 259
• White Horse: 261
• Quanah Parker: 267
• The War for the Black Hills: 273
• CHAPTER TWELVE 24 Sitting Bull: 281
• Gall: 295
• YoungManAfraidofHisHorses: 301
• Little Big Man: 309
• Crazy Horse: 310
• The Flight of the Nez Perces: 315
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN 32 Chief Joseph: 319
• Cheyenne Exodus: 331
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN 33 Dull Knife: 337
• Little Wolf: 339
• Standing Bear Becomes a Person: 351
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN 35 Standing Bear: 361
• The Utes Must Go: 367
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN 36 Ouray: 369
• Nicaagat Jack: 375
• Quinkent Douglas: 378
• Colorow: 385
• The Last of the Apache Chiefs: 391
• Dance of the Ghosts: 415
• Wounded Knee: 439

About the author

A librarian for many years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dee Brown was the author of over twenty-five books on the American West and the Civil War. His Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, considered a classic in its field, was a New York Times bestseller for over a year, and has been translated into many languages. Dee Brown died in 2002.

Hampton Sides is editor-at-large for Outside magazine, and the author of Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder. He won the 2002 PEN USA Award for nonfiction.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West; Holt paperback
• Author: Dee Brown
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, annotated
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2007
• ISBN: 0805086846, 9780805086843
• Length: 481 pages
• Subjects: History / Native American; History / United States / 19th Century