Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is a fully documented account of the genocide and displacement by the United States government and military of an entire race of people, human beings, natives of the land that spanned from sea to shining sea. This unthinkable inhumane act was done in the name of Manifest Destiny, a name Congress gave to this movement.

Brown documents battles and defeats of the Navaho, Nez Perces, Cheyenne, Apache, Utes, the Sioux and other tribes against a relentless and dishonorable government. The Great Sioux Nation, once comprised of almost a quarter of the land mass of the continental United States, signed the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868, establishing the Great Sioux Reservation. This treaty brought a halt to the Red Cloud War of 1966-1868. Under the terms of the treaty, the United States military was to keep all unauthorized non-Indian people out of Lakota lands, (Dakota territory).

However, in 1874, Lt. Colonel George A. Custer commanding the seventh cavalry, violated the treaty by entering into the Black Hills region on a supposed geological expedition, the true objective was to pick a site for the establishment of a military post. With the discovery of gold, the rush of prospectors swarmed into the Sioux territory, breaking the treaty of 1868. By 1874 the whites out numbered and out gunned the Sioux. By 1890, after years of battles and broken promises, there was little left of the Great Sioux lands.

In October, Kicking Bear visited Sitting Bull, the most respected of the chiefs. Kicking Bear recounted his vision of the Ghost Dance, shown to him by the Messiah, Christ. The Messiah, he said, told him those who danced the Ghost Dance would be "taken up in the air and suspended there while a wave of new earth was passing, and then would be set down among the ghosts of their ancestors on the new earth, where only Indians would live" ().

The dance spread through the reservations and by December, Indians were dancing in the snow from dawn until far into the night. The government saw this as a threat, not a religious rite. Sitting Bull arrest warrant was issued, and as he prepared to leave, was accidentally killed. Next came Big Foot's warrant. As he traveled toward Red Cloud's protection at Pine Ridge, he became ill and had to travel by wagon.

Before reaching Red Cloud, Big Foot was met by soldiers, who then proceeded to escort him and his people to the cavalry camp on Wounded Knee Creek. At camp, they were disarmed, but as one young deaf Sioux resisted from pride, a skirmish ensued, followed by a single shot, then immediately followed by the firing from hundreds of soldiers who had been.