Just finished Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. Might as well be titled "Genocide for Dummies." This book came out in 1970, so it's older than me and filled with much more knowledge. The author, Dee Brown, has written a slew of Indian (that's Native Americans, y'all) histories. Also found out that the book was turned into a TV series and aired on HBO this May. Wish I'd known about it then, could have saved myself 446 pages -- just kidding.
Wounded Knee is a powerful document detailing the US Government's extermination policy concerning the Indian tribes of the American West. Each chapter details how a different Indian tribe (or tribes) was coerced, subdued and eventually defeated by US forces. Even when tribes voluntarily submitted and went to their reservations, the conditions there were too often inhospitable and unsuitable for survival. Rations were given infrequently if at all. And of course most of the reservations were set aside on land you couldn't give away to the white settlers.
At every turn, the Indians signed treaties only to see them soon broken by the government or settlers, trappers and miners who cared nothing about the Indians' rights to that land. And once those settlers were on the land, the US government always said it could not force them out even though the Indians themselves had been forced out!
Sure, there were a few US officers along the way who tried helping the Indians by seeing that they were treated fairly, but those officers soon found themselves unable to advance in their careers or moved to areas where they presented less hindrance to "progress."
And there were several Indian Chiefs whose warriors gamely fought US forces and kept them out of Indian lands, but those victories were only temporary. Eventually, all the tribes were surrounded or hounded by troops and forced to surrender (or die) due to the superior fire-power and numbers of US soldiers.
The most fascinating thing about this history, though, is reading about the various Indian tribes and their Chiefs -- how they dealt with other tribes and how they dealt with Washington DC as most of the Chiefs ended up visiting there to seek peace. The earnest words of Red Cloud, Chief Joseph, Captain Jack, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and many others are there on the pages of history. The traits of honesty and simplicity are readily apparent, but many of the officials in Washington simply did not care or would not do enough to help the Indians.
There are several ways to read a book like this one, but two stand out for me -- one is as an indictment of the US government for the ritual genocide of the Native Americans; the other is as the inevitable conquest of a technologically superior people over another. One could argue both interpretations, but the winner of a debate would likely be the side that sees it as a document of genocide. Policies could and should have been adopted, adapted and enforced to better deal with ways for Native Americans and the "New" Americans to live together in peace, but progress on that front was always stifled. Even a court decision declaring an Indian as a person was widely ignored because the government chose to inerpret the ruling as referring to one distinct tribe (and only a portion of that tribe) as people.
Imagine that, Indians as people.
And whatever way you read it, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a compelling, moving experience. I had never heard the story concerning the title of the book, but that one symbolic tale alone is worth reading the whole thing. For if, like me, you've ever wondered what really happened to the Indians, this book provides many answers that unfortunately equate to a sad, sad truth.
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