Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Authors Intent
Heidi Wyman

Dee Brown was born on February 28, 1908 in Alberta, Louisiana. He grew up in Arkansas where he aspired to be a librarian. He used his time in the library to find the truth about the Indian tribes he was meeting. Brown then attended George Washington University where he studied and earned his bachelor's degree in library science in 1937. Brown published his first book, Wave Hight the Banner, in 1942 and followed it up with many more novels and nonfiction books about the American west. Brown acquired his Masters at the University of Illinois where he worked in the library and eventually becoming the professor of library science from 1962 to 1975. While Brown was at the University he wrote his best known book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, this was his greatest achievement that revealed the story of the Indians in America.

Dee Brown thought it was important to inform people of the injustices and betrayals by the U.S. government. Many people have heard stories of the Indians but never from the Indian point of view. Dee Brown met with the Indians of the west and was shocked by their oral narratives because he had never heard their side of the story, the mutilations, betrayals and bad treatment. Dee Brown felt it was important for the rest of the world to know of the true treatment the Indians received from the Americans and published his book Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

Dee Brown showed the mistreatment of the Indians in many different places. He addressed the bad quality of the reservations the Indians were forced to live on. In one reservation "there was not enough to eat in the empty land- no wild game, no clear water to drink, and the agent did not have enough rations to feed them all."(1) This was not all that troubled the Indians on the reservation. "To make matters worse, the summer heat was unbearable, and the air was filled with mosquitoes and flying dust."(1) Brown showed many times that the quality of living for the Indians was very poor because the Americans wanted their land. Part of the intent of his book was to point this out to the public.

A second Intent of Dee Brown was to show the amount of treaties that the Americans made with the Indians and then broke. Almost all of the treaties that were made with the Indians were at some point broken and usually ending in a battle where many Indians were killed. The best example of this is the Battle of Wounded Knee. The American soldiers took the Indians weapons away from them and promised them peace. They then turned their back on them and attacked the Indians who had no way of defending themselves. This is known as the last Indian vs. American battle the end of the killing off of the Indians in America.

When Dee Brown published his book in 1970, many people had no idea of how the Indians were treated and forced out of their land by betrayal. The intent of his book was to inform the people of what the Americans, our government and military had done to the Indians, how badly they treated them and deceived them. Brown told the story no one wanted to hear, how the Americans murdered a whole culture just so we could have their land. He was successful at his intent to inform the public of the treatment of the Indians and revealed a disturbing history. He also fulfilled his intent to tell that disturbing history from the point of view of the Indians.





Bibliographies


(1) Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee : An Indian History of the American West. New York, NY: Owl Books, 2003.

"Dee Brown." Enotes. 2008. 28 Aug. 2008 <http://www.enotes.com/bury-heart/author-biography>.