"They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it."

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown begins at the arrival of Columbus and ends in the late 19th century. This book highlights the Indigenous Peoples of North America and shows a different view of how the American West was "won." When I was in elementary school, what I learned about the Indigenous Peoples in America revolved around Christopher Columbus, the First Thanksgiving, and The California Missions. We did learn about the Gold Rush and had Pioneer days, but those units rarely mentioned how the Indigenous Peoples were affected. In Middle School and High School, we did learn about the Navajo Code Talkers...and that was pretty much it. It wasn't until college where I started learning more about the Indigenous peoples. One of my classmates told me that to her people, Thanksgiving is considered a day of mourning.

This book covers many tribes and such as the Navajo, the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Apache, Modoc, the Ponche, and several others. Many will see familiar names such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Little Crow, Black Kettle, Red Cloud, Little Wolf, and more. However, this book is not meant to teach readers about the tribes. It is to show readers that colonials and white settlers used systematic ways to destroy and eradicate the Indigenous peoples from America. These events will give way to their voices, culture, and identity to be completely stripped...even still to this day. There was a pattern. The white setters would enter a territory, push out the Natives in the area, a treaty would be signed-granting the Natives permanent land, but then they would enter that territory yet again. There would be fighting. The Indigenous peoples would try to fight for the land. The American military would resort to ruthless tactics.

This book also addresses many stereotypes perpetuated on Indigenous peoples. One example is scalping.

"Europeans may or may not have introduced scalping to the New World, but the Spanish, French, Dutch, and English colonists made the custom popular by offering bounties for scalps of their respective enemies."

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

The Indigenous peoples were forced onto reservations and were hunted down if they left the reservation. The other problem is the settlers would purposely kill all the buffalo and livestock, which would force them to rely on the government.

This book should be necessary reading. It is hard. Many will try to justify the American actions by saying this book is biased. However, there are plenty of references and quotes by military and government officials that back up many of the events in this book. The author made sure to really research and use as many firsthand accounts as possible. I highly recommend this read. I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars.

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