Rating: 
Summary: Clearly not a balanced Indian narrative
Review: It concerns me how well people review this book in general. The book is good, don't get me wrong. But 5 stars? Not remotely close. 4 stars? I would say not due to it's unbalanced view of history. Are there good points? Clearly there are a great many accounts of things our government does wrong. But just as there are good points, there are bad points as well. Let me start with those.It's bothersome that he gets some very basic facts wrong, such as the way Crazy Horse got his name. Crazy Horse's father was named Crazy Horse. Yet Brown goes into some mythical explanation of where it came from. There are other points in the book he does this. Referring to Crows that work for the whites as "mercenaries" bothers me as well. Don't people question the loaded nature of the word "mercenary"? Why were they not opportunists? Especially since the Crows were always at war with the Sioux? But when a Native American took arms against another in the name of the white, he adopted the bad traits Brown unilaterally gives white settlers in this book. Brown never explores the cultures that led conflicts to end the way they do. He does not explore the fact that white history does not act like Native American in that 1 or 2 deaths is bad. There are deep underlying cultural causes to explore here that he does not. However, this is not a Brown specific problem. Most Indian books ignore this. Brown totally glosses over the reality of how Lewis and Clark were treated by the Nez Perces. He claims that they were totally gracious and accomodating hosts when the reality was that stealing from the white was commonplace. As in his "mercenary" use, there are always loaded adjectives that taint the narrative to say what he wants and not paint a factual picture. Saying things like Victorio was "slaughtered" instead of killed. Saying that it was acceptible for the Modocs to "tax" the whites as they stole items from them was a gross justification by Brown. Finally, the way he states Canad "treated" Sitting Bull. He complained that the US would not just leave the Hunkpapas alone. But when Canada did exactly this, he complains about it as well. There is no consistency with his work. Ok, so those are the bad things. What about the good things? Brown very successfully highlights the problems just about every Indian chief had in dealing with wiser elders and more reactionary youths. This continued rock/hard place scenario plays itself out in chapter after chapter. The above is the well done in the book and really shows the youth versus the old and stands as a commentary to the ongoing theme of social unrest in society and its inherent nature as youth does not have the wisdom of age. Brown highlights the irony of the Comanche history of planting food, then being driven out, then being told they should be planting crops. Very poignant and indicative of the US government in how they treated the natives. Brown also documents well the continued destroying and ignoring of treaties. This is interesting because the US does the same thing today. Brown's book is painfuly researched. This much is clear. But it bothers me that after so much research, an indian death is a slaughter and a white death is revenge. He paints every Native American as an innocent bystander forced to protect himself and every white as an Indian hating racist. Again, there are good points to the book. But you have to be very careful of the loaded nature of it. I would recommend reading this after you have red several other West/Indian books.
Rating: 
Summary: Some of these stories would make great movies.
Review: Since its publication in 1970, Dee Brown's well-documented history of American Indians from 1860 to 1990 has sold more than 5 million copies. Mr. Brown quotes from original documents, including translations of the actual words of the Indians as they made their eloquent pleas for justice in the many councils they attended and where they were deceived again and again by white men who robbed them of their land. Even though there's a certain sameness to the outcomes, each tribe had a different experience. The Indians didn't have a concept of ownership of land. To them, it belonged to everybody. As they couldn't read, they didn't know what they were signing, but even when they did understand, it was just a matter of time until new laws took even more land away. And then there were the massacres. I had tears in my eyes while reading about them, especially in the descriptions of the cruelty to women and children. The Indians fought as best as they could, but they were no match for big guns and well-equipped armies. It was an awful time in our history, one of shame for Americans. Throughout the book I couldn't help thinking about the real stories it contained that would make great movies. There's the story of the Seneca Indian who took the name Ely Parker and studied to be a lawyer. Because he was an Indian, he was not allowed to practice and so he became an engineer. During the Civil war he was Military Secretary to U.S. Grant. Later, he was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs. How that all played out is a fascinating story. And then there is the story of the Ponca Indian, Standing Bear, who left the reservation in the late 1870s with a small band of people. Because of some helpful white men, his case was argued in the courts. The issue was whether or not an Indian could be considered a "person" and thus be able to live where he chooses. He won his case. But, alas, the outcome was ruled to just apply to his band and not to all Indians. There was often dissention within the tribes themselves. And deception and intrigue. In one case, a chief was bullied by his people into murdering a white man. Later, the very people who had forced him to do this turned him in to be hanged. And then there is the story of the white man married to an Indian and their half-breed children. The children all were able to read and write and there is a lot of documentation about what happened to all of them. I just wish that somebody would write these screenplays. Surely they would be better than some of the make-believe hogwash about Indians that we've all seen. It seems they're either depicted as savage villains or subjected to too much political correctness. And talking about political correctness, I'm not sure about whether the term "Native American" is appropriate. As Mr. Brown's book was written in 1970, he referred to them as "Indians". Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is a well written and worthwhile book. It's upsetting of course, but I am glad for the perspective it gave me. I think it should be required reading in American History classes in high school. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: It makes me angry.......
Review: This book first of all has fantastic details and has the closest depictions of the Indian Wars during this time period. I've read some of the other reviews and was disappointed to see certain comments made about how one-sided or biased this book was. It was from the Native American's point of views but much of it was all too true. Sure it wasn't right that the Indians attacked settlements but then again, was it right for white settlers to come in and take over land that was already inhabited to begin with? They believed in Manifest Destiny and that they had the right to supposed "free land" and that because primitives just lived on it and because they didn't farm it, they really had no rights to it. A good "modern example" would be this, how would you like it if the government was to move you from your home in which you had settled in and you liked the area, but then they kept moving you from house to house until you were put in an area that had nothing. Especially, in a centralized location where your food supply was taken away and instead the government had purposely given you a rotten supply of food. Tepees back then were like the RV's of today. They were not permanent homes for the Indians, but they started using them because they were always getting pushed further out to the West out of their villages all over the U.S. When flight was no longer an option, sadly, the only thing left for the Natives was fight... I realize this book in some ways seem controversial but I'll put it as my college History teacher had mentioned, this book is the closest thing to the real deal.
Rating: 
Summary: A REAL History Lesson
Review: Watched the History Channel lately? How about TLC or Discovery? For that matter, read any history books recently? Forget it all. It took about 400 pages, but Dee Brown has shown me that what I know of American history is bunk. This is the truth behind our heritage and our country. Here is the story of the systematic destruction of an entire people. Thousands and thousands of lives lost to lies, racism, hate, greed, and stupidity. All so the U-S could have more and more and more land. The house you live in is built on land won at the cost of an Indian tribe. Chilling to say the least. Brown's writing is so objective it feels nearly disconnected and remote. And for good reason. You can decide for yourself how horrible the truth is. Brown doesn't need to garnish the facts with commentary. Highly recommended, and nearly perfect. I only wish the book included map platelets so I could more easily understand the many battles, tribal exoduses, treaty promises, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Ignorance is no excuse
Review: A good friend who is part Navajo gave me this book and told me I should read it...he told me it was important. After reading it, I have seen things differently and I don't think I can go back. I see everything differently, from my education to the way our country runs to the presidential politics. Dee Brown's book has effected every corner of it. I still meet people who are afraid to read it and even those who call it "meta-fiction," made up stories by someone trying to make whites feel bad about taking land. But ignorance can no longer help you stand. This book shredded the ignorance that I once held on to. Every American should read it and digest it and reflect on their own rights and privelages and be grateful.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: I am a huge fan of history but really am not a fan of reading. There are are only three books I have ever finished in my entire life, and this is one of them. Usually I get bored and toss them out, or they are just bad books all together. This book is amazing. I wanted a book about the history of the native americans and after reading reviews I felt this would be the best choice. Boy was I right! Much to the amazement of people around me, I couldn't put it down. It gives informative and sometimes heart wrenching accounts of the systematic extermination of the once great Native american nations. It really has taken me aback, I always knew we screwed the Native americans but I never realized it was this bad. If you are a fan of history this is an absolute must read, and coming from one whom doesn't read a lot, that is saying something.
Rating:
Summary: Good contrast to traditional US history, but too one-sided..
Review: As American society reexamines its past and realizes that much of its history has been "whitewashed" in the textbooks over the decades in order to paint the picture of a more just and honorable society, there are plenty of good reasons to look back and see if we need to correct some of the lies and omissions that have long been a part of every young mind's lesson plans. Some would call it "revisionist history," and maybe it is. But it's also pretty clear that some of history was revised incorrectly at nearly the time it was written in order to justify some pretty bad acts. Also, in order to minimize the claim that women and minorities have on shaping the nation, much about their contributions have been absent or woefully underrepresented in history texts. So too it is with this book. It tells the rest of the story, a story that desperately needs to be told. Sure, traditional history texts may talk of the Indian struggle to maintain their lands and their way of life, but generally the role of the U.S. government during the "manifest destiny" period is downplayed. When Indians slaughtered the whites, as at Little Big Horn in 1876, the story is told in gruesome detail in most general U.S. history books...but comparatively little is told of Wounded Knee in 1890. Wounded Knee would make America and our white ancestors look like monsters, so we mustn't dwell on it. Brown pulls no punches here to avoid offending sensibilities; most (if not all) of the stories in here are based on some documentable facts, laws and treaties. In short, we finally see a more accurate picture of the true price paid for manifest destiny (in terms of native lives and cultures). It's hard to read this and not feel at least a little longing to be able to go back in time and change things. Having said all that, I'd feel better about the book if it were a little more balanced and fair-minded about the overall picture between Indians and whites. There were certainly white pioneer families -- doing little more than passing over Indian land to get to their ultimate destination -- who were slaughtered, captured and sometimes raped. Regardless of the reasons the Indians may have been driven to this, if you're going to apply today's moral standards to the white man over events more than a hundred years ago (when opinions and moralities were different), then so too should we hold the Indians to that same standard: today's society wouldn't stand for killing innocent white families because other white families wronged your people. It feels like the whites are having modern moral standards applied to them, but the Indians are not. This is the one glaring weakness of the book, IMO; while the thesis of the book is obvious (and it's not to provide a balanced look at 19th century US/Indian relations), I can't help but feel that some credibility is lost with the lack of balance and recognition that sometimes, Indians did intolerable and morally outrageous things to the whites. Without any concessions to such events in the work, it feels just a bit less than objective. Nevertheless it's a depressingly compelling read. I prefer not to think that recommending it is the same as placing guilt on today's American society for the misdeeds of our great-great grandparents, but rather to remind people why the Indian condition is as it is today, and to remind us all of some very sad chapters in American history which should not be expunged from the textbooks, but rather read with the solemn determination that we will never again allow anything like this to happen.
Rating:
Summary: Important historically, but not a good read
Review: I've only read the first 90 or so pages of this book, but I think I can say that it is pretty bad and not likely to get much better. I mean, it certainly was an important work in that it provided the other side to the story on the Indian wars, but as other viewers have pointed out, it is biased. It does seem more like a cheesy hollywood historical drama, where everything is painted in black and white. We get lots of superficial details and not much meat. I'd like to know what it felt like to be a Native American or a settler back then, and this book didn't give me that. It gave me High School History, the kind of history that turns people off to history. However, the book does have good qualities as well. It lets Native Americans speak for themselves about their history, when traditionally europeans have been the only ones speaking; some of the beautiful language of Native Americans can be heard, the nature metaphors. There is some decent irony. There's some nice description-- And the book seems pretty comprehensive in covering the history of the time. But I cannot continue reading it...it's quite drab. There must be better written histories of this time, that capture the complexity of the relationship between Native Americans and Europeans.
Rating:
Summary: An American history must-read
Review: As a student and fan of history I have read probably thousands of fiction, non-fiction and 'semi-fiction' books, but this could be the most powerful and affecting of them all.
Although this book only covers a thirty-year portion of the early history between European settlers and the native peoples of the United States, the repetitive nature of the encounters depicted fully displays the shameful truths that school textbooks and most Western movies hid, ignored, misrepresented or lied about. In EACH case, the settlers - and later, the U.S. government itself - deceived, cheated, manipulated and brutalized the indigenous people. It began before the 1860s and - take it from a person on the scene - it continues to this very day, only by more subtle and low-profile methods.
My respect for the author is immense because the history is well-researched and documented and is presented in an even tone that makes the emotional impact of the tragic and infuriating proceedings even more powerful. This book caused me to see the stereotypical depictions from my youth of Indians as cruel and vicious savages in a much different light, because it brought me to ask myself if I and my fellow Caucasian Americans would act any differently when responding to an outside, invading force assaulting our country and trying to take possession of this country we consider our homeland.
I highly recommend this book to anyone, novice or 'expert', who is interested in American history and/or Native American people.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible account of America's white-washed history
Review: This is an amazing description of what our history has labeled as a time of "manifest destiny", but was actually a time of murder and deceit. Brown astounded me with his neutral views, giving credit where credit was due, both to good and bad indians and good and bad white men. Since i first read it in 2002 i have re-read it 3 times. Really shows the truth about what America has tried to cover up.
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