Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

An Indian History of the American West

By: Dee Brown

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Dee Brown's eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the 19th century uses council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions. Brown allows 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 - and lost.

©1970 Dee Brown; Preface 2000 by Dee Brown (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking....Impossible to put down." ( New York Times)
"Shattering, appalling, compelling....One wonders...who indeed were the savages." ( Washington Post)

A classic in every sense of the word...

Dee Brown has written some other quality books, but he would deserve a reputation as one of the more readable historians on America's 19th century even if he had never written another word. A true classic, the perspective of which was long overdue when it appeared, this book was as moving for me this year - expertly narrated by Grover Gardner - as it was years ago when I first read it for myself. The shameful treatment of native-American tribes by officials of the federal government at the highest levels, and by the military, should be impossible for any decent person to defend - if considered from the native side. No one has ever presented that side as well as Brown. His research is wide-ranging and his writing is effective. This book is a true paradigm-shifter. No one with an interest in U.S. history should fail to read or hear it.

Required Reading for Americans

I'm left wondering after this is how long it will take the USA to recognize what they did to Native Americans was genocide. Over and over again.

I'm so filled with sorrow after reading this. My wanting heart longs for an alternative universe where we respected the treaties we made with the various Native American peoples, where we didn't lie, cheat, steal, and falsify stories about them.
We have so much to learn from the peoples we have long oppressed.

A good intro to the history

For anyone wanting to learn about the treatment of Natives in their own country by the immigrants of Europe

Sad

It's a wonderful read, it's the real truth , sad but a must read for every one.

important read

yes, one sided, but essential perspective from the losing party in this part of history

A great place to launch a discussion

This book reviews the history of the relationship between European Americans and Native Americans. Reference books are required to keep the content in context.

Sad but important story

The story is very sad and difficult to listen to because we know there’s not a happy ending for the Natives. The narrator was a bit monotone and boring. Overall, I enjoyed the content and how the author includes historical references to set the tone.

Hidden history of genocidal US westward expansion

The United States of America is a nation founded on genocide. The continental US was the ancestral homeland of millions of natives inhabiting it continuously for 40,000 years. Somehow, this vast territory became the domain of white settlers. How? During the massive westward expansion of the US all the way to the Pacific coast in the years 1840-1890, this was the general procedure:
1) Invade Native American (aka Indian) territory by making trails, building railroads, staking land claims, stealing livestock, or just attacking them without warning.
2) Provoked Native American tribes fight back to reclaim their hunting grounds, get back their livestock or their captives, or take revenge for the murders white people committed.
3) Settlers complain to the US Government, which now sends overwhelming force to attack the tribe.
4) Even though massively outnumbered and only possessing primitive weapons, the tribes inflict huge casualties on the US Military or outright defeat them.
5) The US Government makes a treaty with the tribes, granting them rights to a diminished, marginally habitable territory, supposedly in perpetuity, and forbidding trespassing upon Indian hunting grounds and pastures. In the meantime, they forcibly march the Indians on foot to their new territory hundreds of miles away. Many Natives perish in the marches.
6) The Native Americans do not read or write English, so with each treaty, the US routinely swindles Natives out of vast swathes of their territories. Many are confined to restrictive, barely habitable reservations. Their government-issued food rations are meager, or stolen, or of inedible quality provided by profiteers. Widespread disease and death ensue.
6) Within 1-5 years, the treaty is violated by white settlers who want to mine gold, raise cattle, build railroads or make trails through the supposedly sacrosanct Native American territory. The US Government fails to enforce its own treaties. The tribes have no choice but to undertake the defense of their lands.
7) Completely ignoring their own treaties, the US Army takes this as justification to exterminate the Native Americans. Their usual modus operandi is to attack unarmed villages without notice, moving down everyone, including women and children. They all fervently believed in Gen. Sheridan’s maxim, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
8) The few surviving Native Americans are confined to unlivable reservations far away from their homelands. Most die of disease, malnutrition, or broken hearts.
9) Repeat cycle for any remaining tribes until all are exterminated or confined to reservations.

The pattern of genocide is similar to how the Nazis exterminated Jews. First, Native Americans were declared subhuman, and therefore worthy of slaughter. This was completely accepted public opinion amongst white Americans.
Second, the Americans controlled all the means of creating and disseminating information, which they used to create outright lies and propaganda to further demonize Natives.
Third, once the tribes were overpowered and captured, they were confined to reservations, which functioned just like concentration camps.
Fourth, whites used manufactured, quasi-religious doctrine such as “Manifest Destiny” to justify breaking the treaties they themselves had written up, then invade more territory. America’s destiny was to go from sea to shining sea. The Natives just had bad luck to be in the way, and had to be removed.
Before reading the book, I knew that non-Indo-European place names in the US were of Native American origin. Twenty-six of US States have Indian names, as do hundreds of cities, counties, lakes, mountains and rivers. And you know what? 99.9% of the people who named those places or were named after them were murdered by the US Government.
If everyone knew about the atrocities committed against the indigenous people, seeing these names – like Nantucket, Seminole, Tuskegee, Massachusetts, Algonquin, Alabama, Tennessee – would have the same emotional valence as signs saying “Auschwitz”, “Buchenwald” and “Treblinka.”
But most people don’t know, because history is written by the victors. And when I was a kid, we watched Westerns and played Cowboys and Indians, and everyone knew that the Indians were the bad guys.
Except that we were wrong. The Indians were the good guys. They were peaceable animists with venerable cultures who had figured out how to live in balance with their environment for 40,000 years. They had a real sense of honor and right and wrong. They were tremendously brave, and fought when they had to, in a way that astonished their white adversaries. They were not afraid of death. And every white person who got to know them well became convinced of their nobility of spirit.
If it weren’t for the Indians teaching the Mayflower pilgrims how to hunt, build homes and farm, all those white people would have died in their first winter, and there would be no Thanksgiving holiday. Instead, the white people grew in number, overtook and massacred the peaceful Indians who just wanted to be left free to live like they had for the 40,000 years prior. The Native American culture was a humanistic, just and ecologically sound one, and the Western world is impoverished for having destroyed it.
Most Indian tribes did not have a written language. Dee Brown’s detective work to find stories told from the Indian side, dig up government archives, and construct a cohesive narrative, is nothing short of Herculean. It's not an easy read, but it is a necessary one for all Americans to understand the human cost of America's stretching from sea to shining sea.

Bury my heart at wounded knee

Great book very informative. Exiting to hear about the different tales and background of the many native tribes that once roamed the north American lands.

Listen.

Listen and learn so that we do not repeat ourselves. The stories of selfish and caring and misinformed and misunderstood people are contained in these words. Listen.