Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (Arena Books) |
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Dee Brown
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Pages: 512 (Paperback)
ISBN: 0099526409
Pub: Vintage
Pub date: 2007-11-01
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 6456
Reader Reviews:
Bury my heart at Wonded Knee - Dee Brown (0/0 people found this helpful)
An amazing book - amazing for the stories of misery and deprivation heaped on the Native Americans by the civilised white immigrants. It's not a book to sit back with a coffee and enjoy; in fact it made me so sad that I had trouble reading it. As for how well the book 'works' as a read: I found it mainly a collection of stories about specific tribes and families. It's not a connected narrative - it's basically a chronology split into chapters by the individual tribes. Chapters chronologically over-lap. In literary terms I don't think you can sit back and read through easily. This is not a criticism but I found it more of a reference type work and one where you can easily dip in to. No disputing that it's facts are awful but it's essential we read the history of white colonisation of the USA, Australia and other places and I hope we learn from the many mistakes.
Truth and historical fact, painful and compelling (2/2 people found this helpful)
I'm quite an emotional person, but this book angered me and hurt me in equal measure throughout, so much so, that its probably the most emotional account of historical significance I have ever read. I have cried throughout.
I first came across the book in 1982, when a science teacher of mine brought it into class after an American holiday. He smuggled it out of the States, he claimed, and its story touched me then. I didn't read much then, but now I have my own copy, it touches me more deeply than I could ever have imagined. Its a difficult and upsetting read.
Genocide, or attempted genocide is something civilised people simply do not do. But what Dee Brown captures in all too few words is genocide on a brutally wide scale, by a supposedly civilised nation. Its possibly more shocking than the treatment of black people in pioneer America.
The stories are heart rending and made me feel ashamed to be descended from the kinds of people that make this book so shocking.
I once saw a series on the televison called How The West Was Lost, and this book explains in graphic detail what that series shied away from. Here are the well known names from American Indian history, but also names not so well known. Long forgotten by outsiders, they crop again and again to remind the reader that the so-called Indian Wars were not simply personalities matched against each other, but horrificly planned exterminations.
It is said that history is written by those who hang heroes, Dee Brown has written a history of the hanged.
I admit the United States was morally at fault. (1/16 people found this helpful)
But were we much worse than the indians themselves? Was the average Indian Brave really more noble, more morals than the average cavalryman, that also exhibited bravery?
The indians did want peace over being able to keep all their lands. The Whites preferred greed over peace and Territory over indian freedom.
The book details the fact Indians wanted peace with the whites, and would generally fight only to protect their lands from the whites. It also says whites want more lands instead of being content with smaller amounts like the indians and living poorly, and would violently take lands belonging to other people. They weren't protecting their own. But America was their new home and their was too many whites coming ashore.
You realize once the whites came they couldn't very well have lived side by side with the indians. They worked by farming, while the indians needed large hunting spaces unhindered by man made dwellings and fields. So unless the white man took a little bit of land for himself and made it "whitish", or he became to live like an indian which is a lot to ask, just like it was a lot to ask of the indiant to turn white, he should never have settled in America.
Like I said above, the Indians were peaceful to the whites as long as possible. But many never behaved that way among themselves. Many indian tribes were violent before the whites came, not like the Tainos. Many indian tribes or cultures didn't learn massacring villaes from the whites like the book can make you believe. They were not just "imitating" the fashions of white warefare. They had it inherited in them. The differance was that they never poured it out on white people like they did on themselves. The indians only did it when there was alternative to survive the white intrusion.
The indians were doing savage warfare to each other long before the whites came. The book passingly mentions, and without condemnation, how the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho drove out the Kiowas from the plains territory. That was no differant than the whites driving out the indians really. An indian war like that occured all over America for centuries. So while the Indians practised the Golden Rule towards the Whites, they did not follow it towards enemy tribes. They would steal from each other and fight each other like marauding wolves, stealing horses and burning villages. They were no more civilized than the whites in that regard, except that the whites had a "civilized" society.
Many an indian Chief would lead an unprovoked attack for gain on a indian neighbor, just like the whites. One can argue of course, that the indainss needed the gain more than the rich whites did.
So while the indians waged a noble war agains't the whites, while we waged an unoble one, the indains quarrels and wars were among some of the blood thristy and merciless the world has ever known of older days.
Buried My Heart, Too (6/6 people found this helpful)
I read this book over ten years ago and have read it a number of times since, and it just doesn't seem to lose any of its impact.
"Bury My Heart" is the harrowing tale of the systematic conning, concentrating and extermination of the Native Americans of the United States between the 1830s and 1870s.
Told chronologically, it relates tribe-by-tribe the incredible levels of deep-seated racism and greed displayed by white prospectors, settlers, soldiers and politicians as they carved up the vast land of North America into its component states and territories in their boardrooms and forts, with the Native Americans trampled underfoot along the way.
Not legally recognised as "people" (with the sole exception of Standing Bear, who managed to become a person only through legal action), the indiginous occupants of North America were confronted by soldiers tribe by tribe, and told to move out of the place they lived, and onto a reservation - or be killed. The Native Americans who agreed ended up on reservation land which was no use to the whites - that it, no use for hunting, farming, or living. The rations fed to them were not fit for human consumption, and on some reservations, most simply died from disease or starvation. Those who tried to complain, resist, or leave were imprisoned or killed. For the Native Americans that fought, they resisted long and hard but eventually they became vastly outnumbered. Originally they were only a few million in number themselves, but with another ten million new white faces arriving each and every year over the period written about, the already rapidly-diminished native population found itself up against unconquerable odds.
Dee Brown wrote this originally in 1970, when Native Americans were still termed "Indians", and there are references to "squaws" and "heap big soldiers" that probably wouldn't be found in a more modern treatise. Nevertheless it's a hugely important piece of work that exposes the early movers and shakers in an embryonic United States, for the lies, greed and deep racism that they indulged in.
An absolute must-read.
Crafted by a thought provoking genius (2/2 people found this helpful)
The American West is a tale usually known through overly dramatic films, simplified campfire style stories and irritating stereotypes. Ofcourse, there are a lot of great films, documentaries and novels out there that due capture the spirit of the real West, and to tell a truthful tale. But these always seem to get lost or forgotten everytime a John Wayne classic or a slightly different Clint Eastwood film roles around on mid aftertoom television. However, Dee Brown's fantastic and rare style of writing, a style that somehow dramatises facts to truly bring them to life, makes 'Bury My Heart...' a book that stands as a true pioneer when it comes to disovering the truth.
Ofcourse, it would be unfair to say that this book is the best piece of literature explaining and describing the whole of the American West that has ever been, as I dubt a single book would be able to convincing achieve that goal. 'Bury My Heart...' focuses on the forgotten people of the West; the Native Americans. These largely innocent people were, to put it bluntly, torn apart and exterminated by the white man's colonisation of their homeland. They are portrayed as merciless, evil and violent in many references, but the simple fact is that on many occassions, all of which the novel explains with amazing depth and insight, it was the White man that became the villain, and not the savage, unskilled warriors that many assume them to be. The Native Americans have a tragic history, and whilst some are still around today, their past is barely remembered compared to the triumphant victories and amazing heroism of White would-be Americans of the same period.
But, it is in the telling that sets this book above all others. On such a tragic history, it would be very easy to simply balme one side, or become bogged down in the misery and depression that became so many of their lives - but no. The novel is a balanced read, and talks of both the good and the bad deeds of both sides, when these two sides came togther, both in terms of conflict and peace. The facts are clear to see, but Brown uses many conditional and contingent factors to justify, further explain or imagine surrounding details, possibilites and emotions.
Overall, the book provides a detailled history of one of the most forgotten peoples of our Earth, but it does so with an emotion, livelyness and fluid style that keeps the book moving on. You will find yourself tearing through, as Brown shifts from one event to another, one person's story to another, with a skill that I have very rarely seen.
This book is fantastic, both as historical reference or just a good read. One thing is for sure; it will make you think. Enjoy.
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