Summary Of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Improved Essays
Our country has a history of fighting wars, creating conflicts, and devastating relations once held throughout the world. We learn about these events because they have played and continue playing important roles in society; but what about the events that the United States has been involved with, that may not have been important to the world, but was important to a certain race of people who ultimately got their freedom taken away from them. The race we never largely learned about in school, and the people 's freedom we stole from was that of the Native Americans. In Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the author Dee Brown tells the story from the Natives perspective, and really shows how in most cases the U.S. government acted poorly in most Indian related matters. The mistakes the United States Government made, could have easily been prevented if they had considered the Natives as humans. In chapter 4, The Cheyenne, Arapahos, Sioux, and other tribes agreed to let the whites use their land for trade and for posts in 1851, but the white man 's flooding of the territory over the next 7 years would prove too much for the natives. The natives signed a treaty giving them less land than they already hand, and to make the matter worse, U.S. soldiers arrived to take care of Confederates hiding in the area. After Lean Bears death there had been several fights among the whites and natives, but after talking with some U.S. officials, Black Kettle was convinced that he and his people were safe from any confliction. “So confident were the Indians of absolute safety, they kept no night watch except of the pony herd.” (Brown 87). Black Kettle would be proven wrong the next morning when the U.S. soldiers attacked the Cheyennes on Sand Creek. A very large majority of the Natives at Sand Creek were massacred, including the women and children. If so many of the U.S. soldiers hadn’t been sent to this area and they weren’t told to kill hostile Indians, I think that the fighting and possibly even the massacre could have been prevented. Another instance in the book where violence could’ve been prevented is when the U.S soldiers enter the Powder River territory and trying convincing the chiefs to go to Fort Laramie and give up their land. Few chiefs sign, including Red Cloud, and become even more frustrated with the U.S. when they learn that they want to put a road through it. They feel betrayed and begin harassing people using the Bozeman Road, and they eventually start attacking white settlers. The U.S. surrenders the territory, creating a large victory for the Red Cloud and his people. “After two years of resistance, Red Cloud had won his war.” (Brown 145). The attacks on settlers and other whites could’ve been prevented had they decided to give more to the Sioux for the road they wanted to build. In addition to the U.S. ignorance, the Apache people in chapter 9 are coexisting with the whites until Chief Cochise is brought to testify in a military court and is imprisoned despite his innocence. After escaping, he joins forces with Mangas and begins terrorizing white operations and settlements until the U.S. soldiers arrive and kill Mangas. In …show more content…
The Cheyenne decided not to stay, but soon learn that had been betrayed by the U.S once again. Forced to stay in the fort, they soon found out that the supplies were very scarce and that even hunting buffalo would be pointless because there were hardly any. “There was not enough to eat on this empty land-no wild game, no clear water to drink, and the agent did not have enough rations to feed them all.” (Brown 334). In an act of survival, the Cheyennes split up and go to Red Clouds reservation or north to their old home. After both groups had been captured, they were put in reservations and eventually were given their own reservation on the Tongue River. The U.S. could have easily avoided bloodshed and hassle by keeping their promise to let them leave, and then give them the reservation that ultimately was given to them

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Choctaw Indians Case Study

    • 1771 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Indian (d) a) Although many Choctaw Indians did resist the removal, it was a quieter one than the others. b) After the Treaty of Fort Laramie (also called the Sioux Treaty of 1868,) the Sioux were granted the ownership of the Black Hills and hunting rights to various parts of South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. However, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, gold prospectors began to violate the treaty, leading to the Black Hills War. When the U.S. government seized the Black Hills and offered the Sioux money for the land, they refused the money and demanded the land back.…

    • 1771 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As highlighted in Richard White’s 1978 article “The Winning of the West,” the Sioux were the agents of their own migration and expansion between the late seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. The first phase of migration, which occurred in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, was for small-scale beaver fur trade and subsistence buffalo hunting; the second, from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was to conquer neighbors in order to acquire their hunting grounds; and the final period, in the early and mid-nineteenth century, was to support the lucrative trade and Sioux lifestyle by following the buffalo and raiding neighbors for necessary resources to aid in this mission. Overall, White argues the idea that native…

    • 927 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Therefore, the government created The Fort Laramie Treaty that would limit the white settlers from entering those areas, but failed to follow it through. Because of the fights the Sioux were causing, the government created a “Great Sioux” reservation and suggested the Indians to relocate to this camp. After their attempt to purchase the Black Hills from the Indians, they mandated all Lakota to settle on the reservation by January 31, 1876. Many Indians lost their homes and food rations in the winter that they surrendered to the troops and went to the reservations. Sitting Bull and his tribe refused to be part of the reservations and be forced to leave their customs that they decided they would rather…

    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Hitchcock, which describes how a Kiowa chief had to fight to protect his land from white encroachment, land that was supposed to have already been protected by treaties. Lone Wolf and several other Indians had sued Interior Secretary Ethan Allen Hitchcock to stop the allotment of the Kiowa-Comanche- Apache Reservation located in El Reno, Oklahoma. According to article 12 of the Medicine Lodge treaty made in 1867, the cession of Indian land was forbidden unless approved by three-fourths of the tribe's male members. This was dismissed in the Court's opinion due to plenary power and the Jerome commission of 1889, which opened Indian Territory to be settled by the whites (Echo-hawk p175). In 1900 Congress had approved the 1892 allotment agreement that had been modified, and also which did not contain sufficient signatures (Clark).…

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Did you know? Native Americans lost their history, their land, their culture, and is one of the least discussed genocides in world history? In 1620, William Bradford involved itself with protestant Pilgrims who wanted to separate from England in search of religious freedom and happiness to the “New World.” Bradford helped organize the journey of the Mayflower with more than 100 passengers. In the historical account, “Of Plymouth Plantations” William Bradford describes his personal perspective toward Native Americans and experiences from the point where Puritans also known as Pilgrims are on sea to their first thanksgiving with the Native Americans.…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Treaty Of Paris Dbq

    • 1599 Words
    • 7 Pages

    This was achieved by controlling Native Americans and establishing white settlements after the ratification of the Constitution. Most Indian land was obtained by the US Government through purchase or Treaty. Treaties were used to draw a legal boundary between Indian communities and white settlers. These agreements were achieved through military victories where chiefs were persuaded to give land cessions for riverfront land and easements that the government used to develop settlements for white Americans. Even though Indian men fought in the War of 1812 for the America, frontier settlers’ views were reinforced and Indians were perceived as a security threat.…

    • 1599 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Emily: Native Americans have always had strong relationships to land and many of these relationships have been shown throughout history. In 1794, Timothy Pickering wrote to United States secretory of war Henry Knox after months of trying to negotiate with the Native people, he wrote he had finally found a way to win control of the Ohio country. “Pickering secured a permanent peace with the Six Nations Iroquois and, equally important, he had received a cession of their claims to the Ohio Valley. In exchange, Pickering had returned to the Senecas most of the land they had lost under the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The agreement Pickering and the Six Nations had reached, in the form of the Treaty of Canandaigua, ended a turbulent period of enmity…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a proud and humbled Native American, that is apart of a group of people who were the first settlers on the face of the American Continent, and to go up against the disadvantages and unfairness that we were treated with, makes me feel disturbed and enraged. The settlers deprived us from our land, enforced their religion, shifted us onto reservation camps and had the audacity to call us godless savages. According to them, the only reason why they came here originally was to get out of the harsh conditions and circumstances that they were under, such as poverty and some of them were even in search for riches such gold. According to “The Closing of the Western Frontier” packet, one of our great and supreme leader's Chief Standing Bear had…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    How Democratic Was Andrew Jackson? Andrew Jackson the democrat? More like Andrew Jackson the DEMONcrat! Andrew Jackson is considered to be one of the most famous presidents in American history because of his “democratic” views. The era of the “common man” marked the beginning for American democracy where ordinary people had a say in the government.…

    • 1166 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, author Dee Brown argues that the Native American’s historical injustices and oppressions should be remembered in the attempt to prevent similar events from happening in the future. He supports his argument through the voices of different tribes and army men as he describes battles, broken treaties and massacres. In this way he illustrates how the racism against Indians in many people, including army officials, causes great tension throughout many conflicts. Brown demonstrates this attitude while he argues that soldiers ignored the Indians desire for peace. Through countless events he argues, that because of the white man’s hunger for land, the Indians were tricked and forced, one tribe after another, onto…

    • 1174 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For several years, the idea of people coming over to a previously uninhabited land full of new rewards brought thousands of immigrants to the frontier lands. With this notion of moving west, many politicians acclaimed that this was America’s right to conquer from Atlantic to Pacific and that it was justifiable by Manifest Destiny. In addition to the influx of immigrants causing a population boom, new technologies stimulated improved communications and transportation that brought several more inhabitants to the new lands in order for them to work and get a better living. Manifest Destiny was especially seen to several as the 1859 Colorado Gold Rush brought instant fortunes for many and caused an elevation in the economic stature. Although moving…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The use of “steamboats created a transcontinental market and an agricultural empire that produced much of the nation’s timber, wheat, corn, cattle, and hogs”(268). That particular method of water transportation“ transformed St. Louis, Missouri, from a sleepy frontier village into a boomin river port. New Orleans developed even faster. By 1840, it was the wealthiest and third largest american city, having developed a thriving trade with the Caribbean island and the new Latin American republics that had overthrown Spanish rule”(268-269). But “ during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a more versatile and powerful form of transportation emerged: the railroad”(269).…

    • 637 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Although the treaties guaranteed their rights to lands all the way to the Arkansas, Red, and Canadian Rivers, the environment in the west made a natural boundary beyond which the southeastern tribes would not move…

    • 1443 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During 1865-1900’s, Western Expansion caused major impacts on the Natives Americans and European Americans. Natives were slowly being wiped out due to the powerful challenges caused by the colonist and the conflict between cultural arrogance such as the natives being primitive and the European Americans thought of being superior. It causes cultural issues that led to Reservation Systems which the U.S. Government forced Native Americans tribes to live in certain areas. This act caused rebellious plans such as the Dakota Sioux Uprising of 1862, the Dawes Act of 1887 and Geronimo. Another major conflict were the issues with land, trade, medicine and cultural differences such as the Ghost Dance, even though some Natives accepted the Treaty Process,…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Native Americans really had only two options in the end; sign the treaty or risk the extinction of their culture. To quote the old saying, “Better bend than…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays