Just Finished Reading: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown (FP: 1970) [352pp]

When they realised their mistake it was already too late, far too late. When the original settlers arrived they were still weak from their sea voyage and were totally unprepared for the New World. They were, it seemed, no threat and the land was endless and full of game for everyone. Giving up a small part of their land to the newcomers was barely an inconvenience – even if they did survive which was in doubt. When the natives returned to check up on their new neighbours they were surprised at how the settlement had grown – both from births and further landings. Cabins had been built, trees cut down and fields planted. The natives were greeted but looked on with suspicion. They returned to their tribes troubled about the future. Within a few years the original settlements had grown further and others had sprouted up like weeds along rivers and further along the coast. Each day, it seemed, more ships were arriving. Before long the expansion of White settlers started to impinge on the native hunting grounds. Arguments ensued and it was not long before blood was spilt. Something needed to be done. Maps were drawn and lines on those maps were drawn to show land owned by White men and land owned by the Red man. Without any real concept of land ownership the natives smiled and let the Whites have ‘their’ land and moved further into the endless steppe. Years passed in comparative peace. The natives didn’t really mind White settlers crossing their land. What they did mind, and strongly objected to, was the indiscriminate killing of game, the temporary settlements that seemed to persist for years and the search for useless rock the Whites called ‘Gold’ or ‘Silver’. But when objected to the White authorities and the previous treaty mentioned the only response was the need for a new treaty and more land concessions. Increasingly the natives wondered where it would end. Just how much land did the Whites need? Just how many White settlers were there?

Pushed, pushed and pushed again, some of the natives began to push back. Blood was again spilt either with or without the tribal chief’s knowledge or agreement. Rather, as they expected, that being the end of the matter the Whites pushed back – hard. The natives, seen until this point as a possible impediment to expansion, now became perceived as a potential threat. Something needed to be done and it was – at the point of a sabre and at the point of a gun. The inevitably defeated natives were then settled on ‘reservations’ which usually encompassed the worst of the available land and left there. Repeated time and again, often with increasing brutality, the native numbers and geographical reach dropped year by year as the numbers and spread of Whites increased like the locusts they were all too often compared to. It was the beginning of the end.

I can see why this book – published near the height of the Hippy years – had such a huge impact in the US especially. Undoubtedly this powerful narrative brought home to many white Americans the true history of the Native Americans who preceded them for the first time. I image that many of them were shocked and honestly appalled at the treatment of the first settlers who roamed the land long before the events at Plymouth Rock. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a slow motion Holocaust. Some of it was, no doubt, accidental with the unintentional spread of European diseases onto a continent unfamiliar with them. Some of it, likewise, was the unintended consequence of other actions but by far the greater part of it was deliberate, calculated and sanctioned by local, federal and national agencies and individuals. The natives were in the way and needed to be ‘dealt with’. I freely admit that I don’t know enough about the continental genocide euphemistically called the Indian Wars but this book did come across (at least to me) as more than a little partisan. I can understand the need, especially at the time, to put forward a viewpoint (from the Native American side) that I presume had hardly been heard up till that point but still I found the depiction of Whites as essentially bad/greedy/untrustworthy, with a few notable exceptions, and Natives as essentially naïve/peaceful/trusting as rather simplistic in order to make a point. However, like all knowledge gained, it’s never a good idea to rely on a single book or a single PoV on any subject. In that vein I shall be reading more about the Native American experience in the months to come. An interesting and historically important read. Recommended with caveats.