Rating: 
Summary: Looking Eastward at the original Americans
Review: Americans have always studied the American Indian from a viewpoint looking Westward -- this is a book that looks at them, looking Eastward. New perspectives (at least new when the book was published in 1970) and shocking statistics changed our view of Indian-White relations in the 19th Century. Characters speak for themselves in quotes from Presidents, Chiefs, generals, braves and cavalry troops.In one chapter the reader is invited to a Cheyenne winter camp to observe their preparation for the hard season. Then, before dawn the next morning, we are led to watch in horror as Lt. Col. George Custer leads a cavalry charge on the village. Of course there is nothing here of the actions that prompted such malevolent response, but that would not serve the purpose of the book. For the purpose of this book is totally one-sided -- to portray one side of the American Indian experience and to cast them in a much more sympathetic light had been done in previous writings. The book is pure, narrowly-focused historic revisionism with no pretense toward balance. All that said, it's a valuable book because for us to understand our heritage, we need to know about and be sympathetic to, the truth of our history, whether it strikes us as "good" or "bad." What looks bad to us in the 21st Century may not have looked that way to us had we lived in the 19th and known only what they knew. This book gives us some of the truth and it should be read and appreciated for what it is rather than lauded as the final word on Indian-White political relations. Let's hope that someday someone will have the courage to write "the other side of the story." And, folks, there IS another side that is equally poignant and equally valuable.
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Summary: A STARKLY BEAUTIFUL ACCOUNT OF WHAT AMERICA HAS LOST
Review: It is axiomatic that history gets written by the winners - the losers are invariably made to look like bad men or natural losers or both. The point of "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" is to take a history that most of us know only from the winning perspective, and narrate it from the point of view of the losers. Brown accomplishes this objective with considerable grace and beauty in spare, elegant narrative prose and verbatim quotes from key historical personages. Not a single word is wasted on description, sermonising or misguided attempts to explain the unexplainable. The mind-boggling amount of research Brown must have undertaken into state, federal and tribal records over the years is placed entirely at the service of the narrative. This story is broken up into episodes of just the right length and pace, each one revolving around a particular campaign or leader. The author never tries to manipulate the reader's emotions, but then he never has to. Sadly, I think (with respect) that some readers and reviewers have missed the point of this sublime work. Of course it is not objective, and of course it is not the whole story. There are two sides to every conflict, and in the so-called "Indian Wars" there were rights and wrongs committed on both sides. But it is in our nature to be partisan, to want closure to a debate, to hold a clear judgement on the heroes and villains of the piece with no shades of grey to blur our moral certainties. The popular "Cowboys and Indians" culture of our parents' and grandparents' day was secure in its belief that civilised Christian values had won the day. The more politically sensitive consensus of our own day all too easily falls into the equal and opposite error of glorifying alternative cultures at the expense of our own. If only real life worked in such simple black-and-white terms! To treat Brown's book as the definitive history of the West - especially as a school history text that at last sets the record straight and for the first time tells it like it was - would be (almost!) as misguided as basing your view of history on Hollywood blockbusters like the Cinerama epic, "How The West Was Won". The value of this book is quite different. It is an unashamedly subjective account of the sufferings endured by the First Americans at the hands of the European settlers and their government. It should be read in conjunction with the standard histories, and (in the mind's eye of the reader) juxtaposed on the images of White American legend. Only thus, by embracing the tension between these different perspectives, can truth be served. Ultimately, Brown's book serves two valuable functions: Firstly, it provides a necessary antidote to the decades of triumphalist legend that depicted the Native Americans as little more than vindictive savages. But more than that, it gives America a record of what it lost through the destruction of such a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Given the simultaneous loss of innocence and the environmental damage that went hand in hand with the destruction, it is clear that the "winners" lost more than we have commonly grasped.
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Summary: A Review from a Teenage Student
Review: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is an amazing book. Very well researched into and put
together (a bit slow though). It gives you a very balanced view recounting events from
both sides.This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in knowing what really
happened between 1860 and 1890. "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."
Rating: 
Summary: Indian Apologetics
Review: I suppose Dee Brown is not to blame; after all, he subtitled this book "An Indian History of the American West". That pretty much says it all for this one-sided, biased, presentation of the clash of cultures which inevitably would result in the extermination of one or the other. If attaining victimhood and sympathy for Indians is the goal, this book succeeds; if the painful truth regarding the bloody massacres perpetrated by both sides is the goal, try a balanced account such as Utley and Washburn's "Indian Wars". One reviewer stated his desire that this book be made required reading in schools and colleges...unfortunately, that is the case, it's only too bad that no corrective, balanced account is also made required reading.
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Summary: One of the Most Important Books ever Written
Review: This book is a very important testament towards the atrocities committed by our government towards the native americans. The story of the Cheroke's during the Sand Creek Massacre is the part of the book that got to me most. The way our soldiers mutilated the bodies of the dead native americans was horrible and proves how evil the white man was. Over all I think everybody should read this book and consider the evidence of how we destroyed many different cultures on the only basis of the fact that they were different from us. A must read.
Rating: 
Summary: Important, but not a great read
Review: I think that this is a very important book in that documents the history of the native americans in the US. It is heartbreaking to read the same story over and over of broken promises and treaties that lead to the destruction of various indian tribes. But as far as reading goes it does get a little repetitious as each tribe has almost the same story of betrayal. Would have liked to known a little more about some of the leaders of the tribes.
Rating: 
Summary: informative but not perfect
Review: I picked up this book with the expectation that I would be terribly angry until well after I had finished it and it didn't really disappoint me: the United States has a lot of skeletons in its closet and having them spelled out in such explicit detail is kind of sickening. However, I took issue with one aspect of the book in particular: the author has a tendency to romanticize the Indians and their way of life. I'm not implying that pre-Columbian civilizations were in any way inferior to so-called Western civilizations-- but pre-Columbian peoples were humans, too, and they necessarily had faults. This problem with the book somewhat compromises the author's credibility, although it is true that in the book he writes of "bad Indians" and even of good white men. There are also some stylistic elements in Brown's writing to which I was not endeared- it is narrated somewhat like a bland work of nonfiction and somewhat in the manner of folklore. However, others might appreciat this style.
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Summary: Ethnic cleansing White European Victorian style
Review: I became interested in Native Americans when I was about ten years old, that was fifty years ago, my interest is as strong now as it was then. Thanks to Dee Browns book over the last few years more and more people are becoming aware of the plight of the native american during the period from 1850 to 1890, forty short years that saw the extermination of a whole way of life. Dee Brown has a way of making you feel part of the events that took place in the "Civilising" of the American west by the white european, the great tragedy is that today it would not be allowed to happen. Treaty after treaty signed by the US Government allowing the native americans land that shall be theirs for as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run, and broken more often than not by the whites before the ink was dry, and when the red man rebelled he was labeled a savage, where does that remark put Col John Milton Chivington after the slaughter at Sand Creek. I possess a large library of books associated with the native americans and I can honestly say that "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is, in my opinion, the bible on the subject of native americans, and I thank the powers that be that Dee Brown had the courage to write this book and bring home to the world the terrible slaughter that took place in 19th century america.
Rating:
Summary: Would give it a 10 if I could
Review: What can one say? This work, first printed in 1971, is still in print and still widely read, and it very much deserves to be. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is probably one of the most eloquent, intense and moving works of exposition I've ever read. For the most part the author, Dee Brown, lets the records and the personal reports of the various participants in the events of the American Indian wars of the 19th Century speak for themselves. He creates thereby a narrative that is more riveting than any modern adventure novel and more poignant than even the finest of the Greek tragedies. The work is very well researched, with an excellent bibliography of the author's sources. It is also well illustrated, with photos or paintings of the various leaders of the native American tribes of the time. It is a veritable who's who of the native west. There are short biographies of many of the more important individuals. Names like Black Kettle of the Cheyennes, Little Crow of the Santee Sioux, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces ("I will fight no more forever,") Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Sioux, and Cochise and Geronimo of the Chiricahua Apaches are among those most likely to be recognized by non-native Americans. What I found most interesting was the extent to which the various tribes were able to hold out against the odds, even resoundingly defeating the US military that hounded them nearly to extinction. It is evident from even a quick reading that it was less military superiority than the policy of starving out the people by destruction of land, animals, and other property that brought about defeat of the tribes. The US military of the time made a war on women, children and the elderly, slaughtering even infants in surprise raids made in undeclared wars or in provoked confrontations. Starvation, freezing weather, and disease brought these proud people to their knees, not military might. In these times of international conflict the tragic treatment of the native American population should be a cautionary tale of what can happen when the self righteous, the culturally narrow, the ambitious, and the greedy use the military to achieve their own agenda. The types of people responsible for the near eradication of a race of people in the 19th Century are still common enough today. In my opinion this book should be required reading for any American history course from junior high school level and beyond it. Only by raising the consciousness of the average citizen from youth onward can the specter of racism on this scale be avoided.
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Summary: A whole new world of American history, a must for travellers
Review: As a traveller from N.Ireland who visited the "great plains" this year, including several of the battle sites mentioned in the book, my only regret about my trip was that I hadn't read this work, before my visit. Having recently begun a study of the Native American people and history, I believe that this book may possibly be the best starting place for such search. The story of the white conquest of the "wild west" has never had so much meaning for me and the Indian viewpoint and perspective has opened up a whole new way for me, of looking at the anthropology of the USA. In short, it's a "must" and a darn easy read too.
In conclusion, I'd have to recommend that anyone wishing to investigate the truth of the clash of cultures and the real history of the formation of the USA, should make this a top priority. Furthermore, anyone planning a trip to take in the history of the "wild west" must, just gotta, read this first, I wish I had.
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