This paper analyzes Dee Brown's landmark book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, examining its major themes of deception, cultural destruction, and Native American resilience. The paper evaluates how Brown weaves Native folklore, poetry, and firsthand accounts into a comprehensive history told from the Indigenous perspective. It discusses key figures such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Tecumseh, and Black Kettle, and considers how the book's portrayal of forced relocation, the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, and the legacy of broken promises illuminates the enduring strength and tragedy of Native American peoples.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown has become a classic of American historical literature because it was the first major work to tell the story of the Battle of Wounded Knee — and the broader conquest of Native lands — from the Native American perspective. The book skillfully weaves Native poetry, folklore, and songs into its narrative, illuminating what Native Americans endured as white settlers took over their lands and upended their lives. It stands as a testament to their strength, character, and pain.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a complex and comprehensive history of Native Americans told from their own point of view, rather than from the perspective of white historians. Brown's writing style engrosses the reader, though the book's length — over 500 pages — may put some readers off. Beyond bare history, Brown incorporates Native American writings, folklore, and myths that deepen the work's authenticity. Throughout, he illustrates how Native American tribes were thriving and vital societies that lived off the land and understood the complex natural world and humanity's interaction with it. One of the book's central themes is the continual deception practiced by white settlers and government officials, and Brown's accounts of forced relocation to reservations demonstrate this deception clearly. The setting is North America — primarily the American West, where most relocations and confrontations between white settlers and Native peoples took place.
The book's title refers to an infamous confrontation in 1890 in South Dakota. The U.S. Army considered the Native Americans gathering at Wounded Knee Creek a threat, intercepted them, and — after a shot was fired — responded with devastating force against largely innocent people. As historian Francis Paul Prucha documents, "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 single tragic episode is representative of thousands of others, but more than that, it is a symbol of the hatred, mistrust, and misunderstanding that defined the relationship between white America and Native peoples.
This misunderstanding and distrust surfaces repeatedly throughout the book. Perhaps one of the most disturbing chapters is titled "The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian," which captures the white establishment's general attitude toward Native peoples and the justification used for forcing them onto reservations. Scholar Wolfgang Mieder writes of 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).
Brown's history ultimately reveals only the tip of the iceberg, demonstrating that the consequences of Native American dispossession have never been fully resolved. Many reservations remain mired in poverty, unemployment, violence, and addiction. The Natives were relocated and their entire way of life was uprooted; many have never fully adapted to the world the white settlers imposed upon them. Some tribes have attempted to rebuild through gaming and other industries, but many reservations will never support their communities the way tribal homelands once did. Brown's book captures the real tragedy facing Native Americans: the loss of their way of life, their culture, and their language. The deception of the white establishment stripped them of everything they knew and loved, and replaced it with nothing of equivalent cultural or social value.
Brown's writing is often poignant and emotional when he turns to the Native Americans' most enduring heroes and martyrs. Of the revered Oglala Lakota leader Crazy Horse, Brown writes: "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 many memorable figures who populate the book. Many are white generals and Army commanders who inflicted devastation on Native peoples — Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, and Crook among them. Others are legendary Native leaders: Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Red Cloud, Santana, Sitting Bull, and many more. One of the most poignant early passages involves Tecumseh, an Ohio chief who recognized early how white expansion was erasing Indigenous nations. Brown quotes Tecumseh: "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). Similarly, Black Kettle of the Cheyenne is quoted saying, "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 voices collectively carry the book's twin themes of duplicity and resilience, helping readers understand both the plight of Native Americans and the remarkable strength of character they displayed in the face of violence and dispossession.
Brown's narrative also reveals how deeply the Native peoples relied on the natural world and on their complex beliefs in folklore, myth, and spiritual practice to make sense of their lives. After relocation to reservations, many tribes found themselves far from their sacred lands, sacred plants, and sacred animals, their entire way of life disrupted beyond recovery. That they managed to survive at all is a testament to their strength and character. Their resistance, and their fierce wish to remain on their tribal lands and continue their culture, is a defining thread running through the entire book.
"Key Native leaders embody strength and determination"
"Spirituality and nature sustain Native identity after relocation"
Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
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