Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is the Native American story of the American West. In many ways the many stories told are all the same story: Native Americans are living happy lives in the West, and non-natives arrive and see the beauty of the land and make treaties with the native peoples and then immediately begin to break the treaties and scheme and lie and fight and kill in order to take their land. And it happens over and over and over again.

‘“So tractable, so peaceable, are these people,” Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain, “that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the world a better nation.”' This, of course, makes the stories even more tragic.

The Navahos...the Cheyennes...the Apaches...the Nez Perces...the non-natives meet them, sign treaties with them, and then amend or ignore the treaties, and soon we see the native peoples shuttled off to land that can't support life or killed in horrendous massacres.

I am left with a feeling of deep sadness for the Native Americans. This is a terrible story, but it is a story that all Americans should know.