Burry My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Alexander Brown was born in Alberta, Louisiana in 1908, but soon afterwards he moved to Arkansas. While living in Arkansas he worked as a printer and occasional reporter for the Harrison Times. He worked there for a few years before entering Arkansas State Teachers College as a history major. He paid for his education by working as a student assistant in the college library. After attending college in Arkansas he traveled to Washington D.C in search of employment. Finally he found a job as an assistant in the United States Department of Agriculture Library in 1934. When in Washington he enrolled in George Washington University and obtained his B.L.S. degree in 1935. Four years later, he was named librarian of the federal government’s Beltsville Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland and he remained in that position until he was drafted into the U.S Army in 1942. When in the army he Brown spent most of the next three years in special services, mainly library related task in the Washington D.C area. Brown was discharged with the rank if sergeant in 1945. Brown actually began his writing career in the 1930s writing magazine stories to earn a little bit of extra money. In the years following his w
The author organizes the book into nine-teen different chapters, written in a chronological order. Starting form the Sand Creek Battle and ending thirty years later with the Massacre at Wounded Knee. First Brown supports his thesis by giving a brief synopsis of “Official American History” than proceeding in great detail with Indian life in American doing that same time period. Secondly the author’s thesis is supported with footnotes and bibliographies from Congressional Records and U.S Army treaties. The author also uses forty-nine photographs to visually reiterate the thesis. Americans viewed the Indians who occupied the land as merely savages. They thought that the Indians had no apparent use of the land and therefore had no real claim to it. Indians to Americans were obstacles that had to be overcome so that the idea of Manifest Destiny continued to thrive. By 1830 the United States government was ordering Indians to move west from there ancient tribal lands. Moving Indians westward became the official policy of the United States government; and by May of 1830 the Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress and President Andrew Jackson signed it into a law. Although the book proves be revolutionary in Indian historical documentation the author can sometimes be very redundant. The reader begins to feel as if they are reading the same thing, but about a different tribe or the author is trying to reprove a point already made. “Carleton haughtily informed them that the only way the Mescaleros could achieve peace would be to leave their country and go to the Bosque Redondo” (p.g21). “Carleton bluntly
Some topics in this essay:
American Indian,
Records Army,
Bosque Redondo”pg22,
Indian Reservation,
Native Americans,
Andrew Jackson,
American Indians,
DC Brown,
Manifest Destiny,
Dee Brown,
manifest destiny,
american indian,
american indians,
wounded knee,
heart wounded knee,
writing career,
heart wounded,
brown supports,
united government,
account american,
washington dc,
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Approximate Word count = 1099
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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