First published in 1970, this extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about the original inhabitants of their country. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending 30 years later with the massacre of Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, it tells how the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society. During these three decades, America's population doubled from 31 million to 62 million. Again and again, promises made to the Indians fell victim to the ruthlessness and greed of settlers pushing westward to make new lives. The Indians were herded off their ancestral lands into ever-shrinking reservations, and were starved and killed if they resisted. It is a truism that "history is written by the victors"; for the first time, this book described the opening of the West from the Indians' viewpoint. Accustomed to stereotypes of Indians as red savages, white Americans were shocked to read the reasoned eloquence of Indian leaders and learn of the bravery with which they and their peoples endured suffering. With meticulous research and in measured language overlaying brutal narrative, Dee Brown focused attention on a national disgrace. Still controversial but with many of its premises now accepted, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has sold 5 million copies around the world. Thirty years after it first broke onto the national conscience, it has lost none of its importance or emotional impact. --John Stevenson


From Library Journal
This 1970 volume greatly changed the view of pioneers' westward advancement. Based largely on primary source materials, this volume details how white settlers forced Indian tribes off the plains, often simply by killing them. Though Hollywood and penny dreadfuls portrayed Indians as red devils who launched unprovoked attacks on innocent homesteaders, Brown's research shows that the opposite is closer to the truth. The text is buttressed with numerous period photos. An essential purchase. (LJ 12/15/70) Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


William McPherson, The Washington Post
"Shattering, appalling, compelling...One wonders, reading this searing, heartbreaking book, who, indeed, were the savages."


Nat Hentoff
"Extraordinarily powerful."


Review
"Shattering, appalling, compelling...One wonders, reading this searing, heartbreaking book, who, indeed, were the savages." --William McPherson, The Washington Post

"Extraordinarily powerful." --Nat Hentoff



Book Description
Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling history The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down"

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition -- published in both hardcover and paperback -- Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.



About the Author
Dee Brown has written more than twenty-five books on American history and the West. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

ANNOTATION

Battles, massacres, and broken treaties from 1860-1890 are documented in this record of the Indian struggle against the white man's greed.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Traditional texts glory in our nation's western expansion, the great conquest of the virgin frontier. But how did the original Americans -- the Dakota, Nez Perce, Ute, Ponca, Cheyenne, Navaho, Apache, and others -- feel about the coming of the white man, the expropriation of their land, the destruction of their way of life? What really happened to Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Cochise, Red Cloud, Little Wolf, and Sitting Bull as their people were killed or driven onto reservations during decades of broken promises, oppression, and war?

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a meticulously documented account of the systematic plunder of the American Indians during the second half of the nineteenth century, battle by battle, massacre by massacre, broken treaty by broken treaty. Here -- reconstructed in vivid and heartbreaking detail -- is their side of the story. We can see their faces and hear their voices as they tried desperately to live in peace and harmony with the white man.

With forty-nine photographs of the great chiefs, their wives and warriors; with the words of the Indians themselves, culled from testimonies and transcripts and previously unpublished writings; with a straight-forward, eloquent, and epic style, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee presents a unique and disturbing history of the American West.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal