No, what gratifies me is that, at least according to Dee Brown, I intuitively had it right from the beginning. I know they'll get mixed-up and blended in my mind in short order anyway. I'm not sweating those details now either. All crowing aside, with only a few exceptions (these mostly concerning events/personages in Arizona where I happened to live for years) I couldn't have said a particular tribe or leader was in that specific area or recounted how this area of land was swindled away while that land mass over there was taken away through the implementation of direct force.
I have three primary impressions of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.The first is how little it surprised me. You learn how people who want to be left alone and to maintain their integrity are dehumanized and herded like cattle when not slaughtered, and yet these are the people called the "savages," and those who perpetrated such injustices claimed to be bringing "civilization." A powerful reckoning with a shameful part of American heritage a work every American citizen should read and on which they should reflect. You learn how corrupt profiteers in the Indian Affairs bureau won large contracts and sent rotten food, making a lot of money but proving responsible for the deaths of countless Natives. You learn to expect that every treaty will be dishonored or "re-negotiated" to the harm of the Natives. What fails to be justifiable is the treachery, betrayal, and genocidal tendencies that marked the United States Army in its relations with the Native Americans.
One quickly learns how the Native Americans are despised and treated terribly justification is never offered for some of their behaviors, but they are put in better context and thus more comprehensible. A historical account of the "Indian Wars," or the interaction of the United States and Native American tribes of the West between 18, as perhaps would have been told from the Native American perspective.The author gives an overview of what happened around the world for each year under discussion, and pieces together the various tragic interactions between Native Americans and the US Army.
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