1860-1890: è il trentennio della «soluzione finale» del problema indiano, con la distruzione della cultura e della civiltà dei pellerossa. In questo periodo nascono tutti i grandi miti del West, un'epopea a esclusivo beneficio degli uomini bianchi. I racconti dei commercianti di pellicce, dei missionari, dei cercatori d'oro, delle Giacche Blu, degli avventurieri, dei costruttori di ferrovie e di città stendono una fitta coltre che nasconde la versione indiana sulla conquista del West. I pellerossa costituivano l'antistoria, l'ostacolo al trionfo della nuova civiltà; per di più non sapevano scrivere nella lingua dei bianchi. Eppure la loro fievole voce non è andata perduta del tutto: alcuni ricordi hanno resistito al tempo in virtù della tradizione orale o per mezzo delle pittografie; dai verbali degli incontri ufficiali è possibile desumere illuminanti testimonianze; nelle rarissime interviste raccolte da giornalisti sono reperibili suggestive ricostruzioni di celebri e sanguinosi avvenimenti; e da sperdute pubblicazioni dell'epoca l'opinione dei pellerossa è potuta giungere fino a noi. Dee Brown ha raccolto queste fonti, le ha sottoposte a un esame critico, ha steso la narrazione. Per la prima volta, attraverso il suo lavoro di storico, a parlare sono i pellerossa, dai grandi capi agli oscuri guerrieri, che narrano come venne distrutto un popolo e il mondo in cui viveva. ( )

This book is powerfully and eloquently written. If I had reviewed it back in 1972 when I read it I would have awarded it a "five." Alas Goodreads didn't exist then.

My views on the book's subject and premise have changed. I still oppose exploitation of Native Americans. The problem is that my later reading, in particular Mann's excellent 1491 disclosed that Native American numbers had been decimated by smallpox transmitted by animals, to the tune of 95% or so. 5% of the population just doesn't get 100% of the land mass.

The Native Americans trod more lightly on the land, but did not create paradise on earth. ( )

A terribly sad and heartbreaking history of how native Americans had everything taken from them. Everything….

I wish that I would have read this as a young man.
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Excellent but horrific account of the Indian wars in America, which included some awful massacres. ( )

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee reveals a sordid little truth about human beings: they have a great capacity to be cruel, to be prejudiced against someone not like themselves, and to justify any kind of horrid behavior with a logic that defies belief. Having just read The Narrow Road to the Deep North, it would have been easy to say, “How could the Japanese be so cruel and inhuman?” And, how often have we asked that same question about the Germans toward the Jews, or Southerners against their black slaves, Hutus murdering Tutsis, or the British who watched the Irish die in the potato famines and refused to send aid? The treatment of Native Americans at the hands of Europeans and subsequent generations of Americans is no less despicable, no less harrowing, and no less shameful. In some ways other atrocities pale before it. It was genocide.

Unlike many, I am perfectly capable of placing historic events in the context of their times. I do not suffer from an inability to conceive that many modern ideas were foreign to our ancestors, that we have made progress (and, I should hope so), or that the masses were fed a steady diet of fear and propaganda that made extreme measures seem nothing less than reasonable to them. Still, I cannot imagine that any man who termed himself a Christian could have committed such acts of villainy and slept well at night or thought he would not have something beyond measure to answer for when he came before his maker. How few men protested or even attempted to intervene, and how calmly and coolly the tribes were promised a peace that was never intended, is the part of this story that most appalls me. That men such as Kit Carson, who had lived with these people, fathered children with Indian women, and spoke so highly of them as a race, could have been persuaded to join in the mass slaughter of them is incomprehensible.

I could go on, because the outrage feels very personal. The flag that Black Kettle stood under with his women and children huddled around him as the wholesale slaughter of his people began, a flag that he was promised would be his protection if he did not take arms against American troops, was my flag. It was red, white and blue. It was desecrated at that moment, and it is not too late for me to shed tears for that offence. What haunts me the most is that I think that seed of evil is still alive in mankind. It rears its ugly head all over the world today. We need to all be on guard against it. The lie that can be fashioned into truth is still a lie.
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