Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee By: Dee Brown

This book made me physically ill. I didn't even know one percent of the atrocities the Native American Nations suffered. White man did everything in their power for hundreds of years to make the Indians go the way of the buffalo, to extinction. After taking their land and putting them in the shittiest places they decided they could then use something in the new reservations, weather it be land for a train, road, lumber, minerals. If the natives were able to survive in these places, they then wanted them back for settlers, and it wasn't even there land to parcel out to begin with. After taking away their livelihoods and land to live off, for they were completely self sufficient which settlers couldn't seem to understand, They expected a thank you and still put a white person to oversee them to ensure they did not find happiness. The Whites started massacres over putting up a flagpole, or if someone sneezed it seemed. After reading this book I realized I would fight to the death rather than live the way the whites made them. I was devastated time after time the natives lost, whole tribes were wiped out, tribes hunted out others as mercenaries and deceived the very people they should have been helping. I was very impressed with Sitting Horse and his conduct. The whites feared him with good reason. He was a man of dignity and pride and would not cave to intimidation. He said "White man knows how to make everything, but not how distribute it" about how they treated their own poor". The same thing can be said today about white man in general. The Government even went so far as to call the natives communist, who must be wiped out. So many times I wanted to put down the book since I felt numb, but the desire to know the whole story prevailed.