Bury My Heart at Wounded

¶ … Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown. Specifically, it will evaluate, analyze, and synthesize the strengths of Native Americans in the face of adversity. This book has become a classic because it was the first book to write about the battle of Wounded Knee from the Native American perspective, and because it skillfully weaves Native poetry, folklore, and songs into the text.

It illustrates just a bit of what the Native Americans had to endure as whites took over their lands and their lives, and is a testament to their strengths, character, and pain. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is a complex and complete history of Native Americans from their own point-of-view, rather than the point-of-view of white historians. Author Brown's style of writing engrosses the reader but sometimes can be a bit overwhelming, and the length of the book (over 500 pages) may put some readers off.

However, Brown includes more than just history in his narrative, he includes Native American writings, folklore, and myths that help make the book more interesting and more appropriate as a history. Throughout the book, he illustrates how the Native American tribes were thriving and vital societies that lived off the land and understood the complex natural world and man's interaction with it.

One of the main themes of the book is the continual deception and lies of the white man and his stories of relocation to reservations show this deception well. The setting of the book is North America - primarily the American West, where much of the relocation took place. Even Eastern tribes were eventually pushed west as the white's spread out from their Eastern Seaboard homes, and so, the American West is where the book primarily takes place, and where most of the confrontations between white and Native took place.

The book's title comes from an infamous battle in 1890 in South Dakota. The Natives were considered a threat by the American Army, and there was word the Natives were gathering at Wounded Knee Creek. The Army intercepted them, a shot was fired, and the Army shot back, massacring a number of innocent women and children. Another historian notes, "Indians were shot down by the soldiers without discrimination of age or sex.

A total of 146 Indians were buried on the battlefield, 84 men and boys, 44 women, and 18 children, many of them frozen in distraught postures by the blizzard that swept down upon the scene after the massacre" Prucha 729). This one tragic episode in Native American history is representative of thousands of others, but more than that, it is a symbol of the hatred, mistrust, and misunderstanding that existed between the white man and the Native Americans.

This misunderstanding and distrust shows up often in the book, but perhaps one of the most disturbing chapters in the book is the chapter titled "The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian." This chapter is indicative of the white man's general thoughts on the Indians, and why they felt they were justified in moving them to reservations to allow whites to settle their native lands.

Another historian notes about this chapter, The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian," about the savage exploits of General Philip Sheridan and many of his officers and troops. Anybody who has read this book, and especially this chapter, cannot possibly see any humor in this proverb. The fact that this proverb is still used today is a very sad comment on this society and its behavior toward Native Americans (Mieder 56).

Thus, Brown's history is really only the "tip of the iceberg," and shows that Native American history still has not resolved itself, and that is another underlying theme in the book. Native Americans have little to look forward to today, as many of their reservations are still steeped in poverty, unemployment, violence, and addition.

The Natives were relocated and their entire way of life was uprooted and changed, and many of them still have not adapted to the "white man's ways." Many natives are attempting to recreate their lives and their history by bringing in gaming or other industries, but many other reservations will never support the tribes the way they lived in earlier times, and so their history and their culture is so changed as to be unrecognizable.

Brown's book shows the real tragedy facing Native Americans, and that is the loss of their way of life, their culture, and even their language. This underlying theme shows the deception of the white man stripped them of everything they knew and loved, and has never replace it with anything else of cultural or social value. Brown's writing is often poignant and emotional when he writes of some of the Native Americans' most enduring heroes and martyrs, such as Crazy Horse.

He writes of the respected leader, In all the years since the Fetterman fight at Fort Phil Kearny, he had studied the soldiers and their ways of fighting. Each time he went into the Black Hills to seek visions, he had asked Wakantanka to give him secret powers so that he could lead the Oglalas to victory if the white men ever came again to make war upon his people (Brown 289). Crazy Horse is just one of the many "characters" who populate the book.

Many of them are the white generals and Army leaders who wreaked havoc on the Natives, like Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, and Crook. Others are legendary Native Americans like Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Red Cloud, Santana, Sitting Bull, and many more. One of the most poignant indicators of what Brown will cover in the book comes early when he writes of Tecumseh, an Ohio chief who saw early how the white men were taking over the Indian lands.

Brown writes that Tecumseh said, "Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the advance and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun" (Brown 3).

Black Kettle, a member of the Cheyenne tribe, is quoted in the book, "I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man, but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else, it is hard for me to believe white men any more" (Brown 67).

These and many other characters carry out the theme of duplicity and deception, but also help the reader understand the plight of the Native Americans and their strength of character in the face of great adversity. It is difficult to stand up for what you believe in when you are faced with violence and death, but the Natives wanted to hold onto their land so much that many of them died for it.

Brown's writing indicates how the Natives relied on the natural world and their complex beliefs in folklore, myth, and their own mystic abilities to understand and make sense of their lives. After their relocation to the reservations, many of their sacred lands were far away, along with their sacred plants and animals, and so, their way of life was disrupted forever. That they managed to survive at all is a testament to their strength and character.

Their strength in the face of such adversity is legendary, as is their resistance and their wish to remain on their tribal lands to continue their culture, and their.