Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
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| Image:Bury my.JPG Cover to a later paperback edition: 1991 paperback edition published by Vintage. ISBN 0-8050-6669-1 | |
| 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 | ISBN 0030853222 |
- 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 a song by Buffy Sainte-Marie and is the name of an album by Yoriyos.
Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, first published in 1970, 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.
Contents |
[edit] Content
Chapter by chapter, this book moves from tribe to tribe of Native Americans, and outlines the relations of the tribes to the U.S. federal government during the years 1860-1890. It begins with the Navajos, the Apaches, and the other tribes of the American Southwest who were displaced as California and the surrounding states were settled. Brown chronicles the changing and sometimes conflicting attitudes both of American authorities such as General Custer and Indian chiefs, particularly Geronimo, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse, and their different 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 plains, who were among the last to be moved onto reservations, under perhaps the most violent circumstances. It culminates with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the murders of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and the slaughter of Sioux prisoners at Wounded Knee, South Dakota that is generally considered the end of the Indian Wars.
[edit] Effect of the book
It is difficult to overstate the impact of the book. As one reviewer put it:
- "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.[2] Its message may not have been a welcome one, but it is backed with sources and references. It remained on best seller lists for over a year, and was still in print 35 years later.
[edit] Chapters
- "Their Manners are Decorous and Praiseworthy"
- The Long Walk of the Navahos
- Little Crow's War
- War Comes to the Cheyennes
- Powder River Invasion
- Red Cloud's War
- "The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian"
- The Rise and Fall of Donehogawa
- Cochise and the Apache Guerrillas
- The Ordeal of Captain Jack
- The War to Save the Buffalo
- The War for the Black Hills
- The Flight of Nez Percés
- Cheyenne Exodus
- Standing Bear Becomes a Person
- "The Utes Must Go!"
- The Last of the Apache Chiefs
- Dance of the Ghosts
- Wounded Knee
[edit] Title
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee is the final phrase of a 20th-century poem titled "American Names" by Stephen Vincent Benet. (The poem was not actually 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.
[edit] Popular culture
- The 1992 video game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time included a wild west level named "Bury My Shell at Wounded Knee".
- The FoxTrot collection that includes the strips where the family vacations at the fictional "Fun-Fun Mountain" amusement park was titled Bury My Heart at Fun-Fun Mountain.
- Buffy Sainte-Marie recorded a song of the same title accounting key elements of the US' opposition towards Native American culture. The Indigo Girls have since covered this song.
- The Cult, in their song "Horse Nation" on their Dreamtime album, has based its lyrics on quotations from the book.
[edit] Film Adaptation
HBO Films has 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. The film received many Emmy nominations and went on to win Best Movie made for Television.
[edit] References
- ^ Sheppard, R.Z. (1971-02-01). The Forked-Tongue Syndrome. Time Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-05-01.
- ^ Momaday, N. Scott. "A History of the Indians of the United States", New York Times, 1971-03-07, p. BR46. "It is first and foremost a compelling history of the Old West, distinguished ... because it is so carefully documented and designed."
[edit] See also
- Wounded Knee Massacrefi:Haudatkaa sydämeni Wounded Kneehen
it:Seppellite il mio cuore a Wounded Knee
