Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Term Paper

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is a fully documented account of the genocide and displacement by the United States government and military of an entire race of people, human beings, natives of the land that spanned from sea to shining sea. This unthinkable inhumane act was done in the name of Manifest Destiny, a name Congress gave to this movement. Brown documents battles and defeats of the Navaho, Nez Perces, Cheyenne, Apache, Utes, the Sioux and other tribes against a relentless and dishonorable government.

The Great Sioux Nation, once comprised of almost a quarter of the land mass of the continental United States, signed the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868, establishing the Great Sioux Reservation. This treaty brought a halt to the Red Cloud War of 1966-1868. Under the terms of the treaty, the United States military was to keep all unauthorized non-Indian people out of Lakota lands, (Dakota territory).However, in 1874, Lt. Colonel George A. Custer commanding the seventh cavalry, violated the treaty by entering into the Black Hills region on a supposed geological expedition, the true objective was to pick a site for the establishment of a military post. With the discovery of gold, the rush of prospectors swarmed into the Sioux territory, breaking the treaty of 1868.

By 1874 the whites out numbered and out gunned the Sioux.

By 1890, after years of battles and broken promises, there was little left of the Great Sioux lands. In October, Kicking Bear visited Sitting Bull, the most respected of the chiefs. Kicking Bear recounted his vision of the Ghost Dance, shown to him by the Messiah, Christ. The Messiah, he said, told him those who danced the Ghost Dance….....