Kristen Philipkoski read and liked Richard's review of The Searchers (Leisure Western):

"I was glad to find this new reprint of the 1954 Alan LeMay classic. LeMay has made a reputation as a writer of stories set in Texas. He has a score of screenplays, novels and short stories to his credit. This novel was the basis of a 1956 film direct...more I was glad to find this new reprint of the 1954 Alan LeMay classic. LeMay has made a reputation as a writer of stories set in Texas. He has a score of screenplays, novels and short stories to his credit. This novel was the basis of a 1956 film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. It is considered to be a great classic western movie; it, and several other Ford-Wayne westerns, including the 1939 "Stagecoach" are quoted by modern directors, including Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese as significant influences on their careers. Another LeMay novel, "The Unforgiven" was adapted into a movie in 1960.

The setting for "The Searchers" is the post-Civil War Texas. The main characters are drawn from the intrepid homesteaders who lived literally at the edge of civilization. One family is the Edwards' who have two daughters and two sons; living with them are also Henry Edwards' brother, and Martha's brother-in-law, Amos, and a young man (probably about age 18 at the start of the story) Martin Pauley. Pauley's family had been wiped out in an Indian raid when Martin was a child and he was the only survivor. He had been placed in a spot away from the home when the family felt threatened; apparently families in great danger took this risky precaution in the hope that a young child placed in a secluded spot may escape being captured by Indians if the rest of the family were killed. Pauley, although not related to the Edwards', nevertheless considers them to be family, including "Uncle Amos," because he was raised by them.


The Edwards' chief friends in the area are the Mathison family. Henry, Amos and Aaron Mathison have partnered in raising and driving cattle to market. The beginning of the story is grounded on the loss of prized cattle of Aaron's when a Comanche raiding party apparently traveling through the area hit Mathison's herd. Amos and Martin ride off from the Edwards farm to join the Mathison possee engaged in tracking down the Comanches to retrieve the stolen cattle. The trackers, after traveling a distance from their homes, discover that the cattle theft was only a diversion to draw defenders from a homestead the Indians were going to attack. The pursuers ride at full speed to their respective farms; Amos and Martin then discover, too late, that the Edwards farm was the one which was attacked. The Edwards and two teenage sons are found dead and scalped; the two daughters, teenage Lucy and eleven-year-old Debbie are missing.

Thus begins the odyssey which gives the book its title. In condensed form, Amos and Martin begin a quest to find the two girls. Lucy's gruesome fate becomes known rather early but the search for the band which hit the Edwards family would take the searchers on a long journey, lasting literally years. Amos and Martin would travel all over Texas and parts of neighboring states/territories, risking their own lives by visiting Comanche villages to ask questions about the Indian leader they learn is named Scar. They learn so much about the ways of the Indians that they become expert interpreters and trackers; LeMay uses their knowledge of Indian lore to inform the reader of Comanche lifestyles. This ongoing tutorial described in fluid prose, combined with the growing development of the principal characters, is what makes this book a rewarding read.

The story of the searchers unfolds against a backdrop of what LeMay correctly describes as the "most dreadful year in history"(p. 150) for the Texas ranchers. All over the Texas Plains, the settlers' footholds are loosening as frontier homes are burned out while their owners are killed and their children are taken captive by Comanches. (Reviewers note: in some cases, women and/or children would be abducted in raids and gradually assimulated into Comanche society; others would be taken for their value as hostages to be ransomed). Only a desparate stubbornness allowed the surviving families to hold on. LeMay seems to be attributing this state of affairs to the nineteenth-early twentieth century views of Indians as being murderous by nature and dishonestly cunning in their negotiations with the government which was trying to keep peace in the West. Thus, we have the theme running through the book of outrage over the Comanche inclination to remain on the warpath, killing and raiding when they earlier signed a peace treaty binding them to live peacefully on the reservation. A short digression from the book is in order.

Modern scholarship is shedding more light on what was going on with the Indians in Texas at this time. Pekka Hamalainen, in his excellent "The Comanche Empire", Yale University Press, 2008, shows how the hostilities on the frontier in the late 1860's were exacerbated, if not caused by, misguided government practices in dealing with the Indians. The United States Government decided to relocate Indian nations, which were living freely on the plains at the time, to reservations in order to clear rights-of-way for the transcontinental railroad. The removal of the Comanches, Kiowas, Naishans, Southern Cheyennes and Southern Arapahoes would serve that purpose and stop the Indian attacks against settlers in Texas. The result was a peace treaty filled by obscure meanings, mutual misinterpretations and shaky compromises, a document that Hamalainen describes as "a typical U.S.-Indian treaty."(p. 324). The Comanche-Kiowa treaty was intended to remove the Indians from 140,000 square miles in exchange for lavish gifts, annual payments of $25,000 for thirty years for relinquishing all of that land, and the opportunity to give up their ages-old lifestyle pursuing the buffalo across the plains to become yeoman farmers. The Indian delegates to the council signed their marks to the treaty, understanding they were allowing rights-of-ways and not relinquishing claims to their land.

A key provision of the treaty was that the Comanches would retain hunting privileges on the land they were supposed to give up "as long as the Buffalo remained there." To the Comanches, however, granting continued use of that land amounted to continued ownership by them. Therefore, the treaty could be interpreted as allowing the status quo. During the first winter of the treaty's existence, 1867-68, the various tribes gathered at the Indian agency at Fort Cobb in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and accepted the government's annuities (food and clothing). When spring came, most of the bands showed that they never considered the reservation to be anything but a seasonal residence, by leaving Fort Cobb to resume their patterns of living on the plains, raiding livestock from Texas, Bosque Redondo and Indian Territory, and trading with the itinerant comancheros. The 1867 Medicine Lodge Creek treaty proved to be not worth the paper it was written on. Liberal policies adopted by the government by the new Grant administration would eventually be discarded following wide-spread blood-letting and the Army's new commander in the West, Philip Sheridan, would engage in a campaign to punish those non-reservation intertribal bands hostile to the government's restrictive policies. This is the historical context of the events related in "The Searchers." Now, back to the book:




The two main characters grow in complexity along different paths. Pawley grows into adulthood as he shares long treks, Indian attacks, blizzards, lonliness and other dangers with Amos. Amos, on the other hand, in addition to simply growing older, has surrendered to a sense of hatred and frustration that has been suppressed for a long time. Martin notices this change in Amos' remark about deciding not to stop searching until Scar and his band are destroyed; revenge against the Comanche enemy has taken precedence even to finding Debbie. Martin realizes that something is at work here that he has not previously discerned. Amos, immediately after the Edwards massacre, is changed significantly. Martin, a product ofthe Edwards household, realizes now why Amos never married and started his own ranch. He was secretly in love with Martha Edwards, and his loss at her death leaves him with nothing but blood hatred for the killers. Martin and Amos develop a deep respect for each other over time, but Martin's personal motive in maintaining the search is based on guilt, for not being a good brother figure for Debbie when he had the chance, and on a realization that he may have to do whatever is necessary to keep Amos from killing Debbie, who by now has grown assimilated into Indian life, when they find her.

Martin and Amos, or Ethan, as he is called in the film, find the village where Debbie is living and attack it in the company of Texas Rangers and Army Calvary. In John Ford's version of the story, Ethan and Scar are the evenly-matched protagonists who must fight to the death because only one of them will save Debbie from a life in the other's world. Ethan rescues Debbie as she runs from the besieged Indian village, and there is a tense moment when Martin, a few steps behind Ethan, must watch powerlessly how Ethan will handle the situation. A happy ending is in store, as Debbie and Ethan pause and look at each other. Ethan gathers Debbie in his arms and rescues her. The searchers take her back home, which in this case is the ranch of the Mathison's (transformed into Norwegians by the name of Jorgensen in the film adaptation). The powerfully photographed Ford vistas of the dramatic West are matched by a scene which draws in the viewer by its beautiful simplicity. The film had begun with Ethan, recent Civil War veteran, coming home to the Edwards' ranch. In the opening sequence, an opening door breaks the blackness on the screen as sunlight enters the portal; the Edwards family goes out, through the doorway, to greet Ethan riding up to the house. This shot is mirrored at the end, when the black screen is again punctuated by a rectangular portal. Martin and Ethan have just delivered Debbie, still in buckskins, to the Jorgensen residence and she is being carried across the porch, into the home. I think she is carried by Martin (correct me if I'm wrong). The rest of the family files in through the portal, including Debbie Jorgensen, who has been flirting with Martin since the beginning and has been waiting for his safe return. The frame shows the solitary figure of Ethan (Wayne) standing, looking in. He pauses, then he turns around and walks away from the home while the door shuts, fading the screen to all black, end of story. I always thought that was beautiful storytelling, although the meaning of the ending is open to interpretation. My take on it is that Ethan is not joining the family because he is being relegated to the past. His (Civil) war is over, and his side lost; his frontier family is wiped out, except for his niece, and he has been living on hate for too long. Sure, he accomplished his objective in rescuing his niece, but what now? All of the familiar old parts of his life have gone away and he is no longer relevant. I have a feeling he realizes this is one of those times in life where circumstances force one to find a new direction, but in the meantime the future belongs to the offspring of the original pioneers.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the teenaged Debbie in the film was played by Natalie Wood while the child Debbie at the beginning was played by her sister, nine-year-old Lana Wood. Oops, but wait, I've spoiled the suspense of the story by disclosing its ending. Not to fear, because LeMay's original version contains much less sentimentalism or Indian stereotyping than the Hollywood adaptation. Amos, for one thing, is not a returning veteran; he has been living in Texas his whole life. Without giving away the ending, it can be noted that Martin and Amos come very close to finally shutting down their search during a final visit to the Mathison/Jorgensens. They had stopped in periodically during the years in the wilderness; this was where they could reconnect to the world of family living, however briefly. Aaron Mathison looked after the remnants of the Edwards' stock, which legally belongs to Debbie if she is ever found; Laurie Mathison and Martin would resume their awkward courtship during these short visits, leaving one with the impression that she would wait for him to take her in his arms as soon as he is free of his other obligation with Amos. Guess what? Just when the searchers are ready to concede an end to their efforts, they get a tip concerning a sighting of Debbie in an Indian camp. They must go out one more time to try to conclude this business. Laurie has had enough of this waiting business. Laurie reminds Martin he is not looking for a little girl any more; Debbie is now is sixteen, going on seventeen, with "savage brats of her own"; she's "the leavings of Comanche bucks" (p. 233). Laurie's inner shrew has been let loose, and Martin's disillusionment with her is repeated when he and Amos finally locate Debbie. Martin gets a brief chance to talk with her by Indian sign language, since she has forgotten her native language, and learns that Debbie isn't waiting to be scooped up into any one's arms and carried back home. The Indian village is eventually raided but the book's ending is highly ambiguous. Let's just say that the story's threads are not so nicely tied together at the end.







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Kristen Philipkoski read and liked Leslie Ayers's review of Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories:

"In the first two-thirds, the world of Olive Kitteredge seems almost interminably bleak, with glimmers of light and happiness here and there. As you keep going, you can't put it down, in the sense that Olive's blunders and sincere attempts to make rig...more In the first two-thirds, the world of Olive Kitteredge seems almost interminably bleak, with glimmers of light and happiness here and there. As you keep going, you can't put it down, in the sense that Olive's blunders and sincere attempts to make right her many mistakes she's made as a mother and wife unfold in a way that gives anyone who's tried--and failed--at relationships hope that anyone can find love.(less) "

Kristen Philipkoski read and liked Richard's review of The Comanche Empire (The Lamar Series in Western History):

"This is described as part of the Lamar Series in Western History, which includes scholarly works of interest to the general reader for the purpose of understanding human affairs in the American West and adding a wider understanding of the West's sign...more This is described as part of the Lamar Series in Western History, which includes scholarly works of interest to the general reader for the purpose of understanding human affairs in the American West and adding a wider understanding of the West's significance to America's existence. This is certainly a well-researched book fit for academic use, but it also is informative to the general historical reader. The author can lay it on thick with his historigraphical descriptions, such as "The unanthropocentric barrier metaphor trivialized the Comanches as a society ..." (p. 344), but this is quibbling. Except for the need to establish its academic bona fides, the book provides a fresh look at the way Native Americans, and particularly the Comanches, are portrayed in print.

Hamalainen's title drives home his point that the American Southwest was dominated for over a century, from roughly 1750 to 1850, by an indigenous imperial society, similar to the Aztecs, Incas and the Iroquois confederacy before them. Unlike those other societies, however, the Comanches, while fighting and subjugating other Native groups, ascended in power while reducing Euro-American colonial regimes to serve their dominance. Proof of this was New Spain's (Spain's Mexican empire) failure to colonize the interior of North America and, indeed, the erosion of Spain's, and later Mexico's imperial authority in its own northern provinces of New Mexico and Texas.

The Comanches established an empire without a single central authority. There were no large settlement colonies; no ostentatious architecture was created; no effort was made to maintain control over subject peoples. This was not Rome on the Great Plains. It was rather the ability to impose their will upon their neighbors (Native and European-based), harness the economies of others for their own use, and persuade their rivals to adopt their customs.

Hamalainen explains the American Southwest as a place where disparate ethnic groups clashed and competed bitterly with one another, but where resources, people and power gravitated to Comancheria, which dominated the region through trade exchange, organized raiding and deliberate destruction fused into a complex economy of violence.

The various Plains Indian groups are firmly fixed in our imaginations as horse riders but most didn't become equestrians until the eighteenth century. The Comanches were among the earliest Plains horse riders. Their ancestry is the Shoshone, who left the Great Basin for the Great Plains over the sixteenth century. Late in the seventeenth century, they splintered into two factions, the smaller group emerging in Spanish records in the early 1700's with the name Comanche. They were introduced to the iron manufactured goods and the horses of the Spanish by their kinsmen, the Utes. They began an equestrian culture of using horses to follow and hunt buffalo herds in the Southern Plains. They traded buffalo hides and slaves for tools, tobacco, flour, cloth, iron tools, firearms and horses at Spanish trade fairs held at Taos and Pecos Pueblos. This was mostly beneficial for the Spanish at first, since they benefitted doubly by the Comanche practice of eliminating their mutual enemies, especially the Apache from New Mexico, and by obtaining Apache captives from the Comanche for use as servants, and slaves in Northern Mexican silver mines.

As the eighteenth century progressed, however, the Comanches started obtaining their horses and mules, and Spanish/Mexican captives for their domestic uses, by engaging in raiding of New Mexican settlements that they would also, at times, alternatively trade with. Hamalainen describes the early 1750's as a time of explosive Comanche growth. He provides helpful maps to show how the area of Comancheria grew. Essentially, the entire plains of new Spanish colony Texas, and northeastern New Mexico, were Comanche dominions. Hamalainen's point is that, over the next several decades, the Comanches became a territorial superpower who called the shots regarding trading and raiding over a wide area which witnessed constant bloodshed.

The Spanish government in Mexico was eventually able to wrangle a workable treaty with the Comanches in 1786 which brought peace to its northern provinces of New Mexico and Texas, but the Spanish were not able to use the treaty to further their aims of making the Comanches their dependents. In fact, their schemes in this regard backfired. The gifts bestowed on Comanche leaders to bribe them into submission became mandatory, periodic payments needed to keep the Indians from destroying New Mexico and Texas.

Spain's Mexican empire collapsed in 1821. The ensuing Mexican governments did not follow Spain in providing even minimal military protection to its northern provinces. The Hispanic residents of the provinces became politically estranged from Mexico City and identified even more culturally, economically and in many cases, through intermarriage with the native groups.

The Comanches used all of these changes in their environment to grow and prosper. They could deal with the Spanish, the Mexicans, the French, or the various native tribes who constantly pushed at their borders, They therefore took in stride the arrival of American traders and immigrants who began flooding into the area after the United States purchased Louisiana from France. The almost inexhaustible demand for livestock by the new immigrants was met by an equally boundless supply. Whatever the Comanches could not supply from their own huge stock, they could obtain by stealing herds from New Mexicans. Very rapidly, Americans became the Comanche preferred trading partners.

Before the American war with Mexico began in 1846, New Mexico was basically an orphaned province with no allegiance to Mexico, and Texas was splintered into two distinct halves: the section East of the Colorado River was populated mostly by Americans, who were duplicating the Deep South's cotton-growing, slave-holding economy; Mexican (West) Texas was under the domination of the Comanches.

The collapse of the Comanche civilization occurred fairly rapidly during the 1850's, a time in which the United States experienced explosive economic and population growth. Part of the decline was environmental, with the start, in 1845, of a prolonged dry spell in the Southern Plains. Part of it was due to the Comanches' own practices of over-hunting, and at times allowing other native groups to hunt, bison on their hunting grounds; this bison depletion, combined with the practice of the Comanche to maintain probably the largest Plains Indian horse herds, had a great impact on the ability of their main source of food and commerce (the buffalo) to replenish. There was also the factor of viruses (cholera and smallpox) which hit the Comanche population especially hard at this time in their history.

The Comanche became weak at the time forces wanted to take advantage of them for economic exploitation. Return of rain and rejuvination of the buffalo herds was matched by the entrance of commercial hide hunters to Comencheria during the 1870's, turning the Plains into the scene of heaping piles of rotting bison viscera. By this time, the U.S. government, trying to control the rampant Comanche raiding in Texas and Indian Territory (Oklahoma) after the American Civil War, negotiated the Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty which intended to keep them on reservation land at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The Comanche dislike of staying confined to one place led to the government's decision to use the Army to engage the non-reservation Indians with force and by destroying their economic lifeline with the Comencheros (New Mexican itinerant traders). A Comanche assault on Adobe Wells, a buffalo merchant trading center, in 1874 spurred the government's position on ending Indian resistance. The end of Comanche freedom as a Plains-living tribe ended with their defeat against General Mackenzie's 4th Calvary at Palo Duro Canyon.

Hamalainen states his primary purpose in writing this book is to change the misconceptions which were made prevalent in Twentieth-Century histories and literature to the effect that memories of Comanches have become linked to impressions of nativistic resistance and mindless violence. He wishes to revise these visions of early American history by recovering the Comanches as full-fledged humans and key actors under the distortions of historical memory.

"The Comanche Empire" is also an effort to revise certain historical assumptions about the conquest of America's West. Hamalainen states the following:

New Mexico and Texas did not perform as intended, as buffers shielding Spain's northern Mexican silver mining district from incursion by hostile Indians. Actually, the Comanche subjugation of these two "buffer provinces" drained the Spanish empire financially. Concurrently, the Apaches who had been displaced from the Plains by Comanches pillaged the silver districts of Nueva Vizcaya and Coahuila at will.

The effect of the Comanches on Plains Indian horse culture was central, not tangential. They were pioneers among Indian societies in the horse-centered way of life and their example forced, and enabled, all of the plains tribes to adopt the horse as a necessary economic and military device.

The U.S. Army's invasion across the Rio Grande into Mexico in 1846 was greatly enabled by the earlier actions of the Comanches in turning vast areas of the Mexican heartland into an economically underdeveloped and psychologically shattered area that was ripe for invasion. As Hamalainen states, U.S. imperialism in northern Mexico descended directly from Comanche imperialism. This is at odds with historians who have traditionally downplayed the idea of American imperialism, explaining American expansionism in the West as a process of merely the occupation of semi-virgin land, overcoming natural obstacles along the way, including bad weather, lack of water, rough terrain, and, oh yes, Indians. As Hamalainen writes, the American invasion of Mexico in 1846 was nothing if not a result of imperialism.

Finally, there is the issue of the modern legacy of an Indian empire which supported a slave complex: the capture, assimilation, and ransoming of thousands of northern Mexicans in the nineteenth century, which profoundly affected the process of "mestizage" in the current U.S. Southwest. This mixing and reconfiguration of racial identities framed official "notreamericano" opinions about the place of Mexicans in the Southwest. In many instances, Mexicans could not be easily distinguished from Comanches, and this Mexicanness-Indianness and its resulting incompatibility with Anglo-Americanness and U.S. citizenship has given birth to Anglo-American understandings of Mexicans as a mixed, stigmatized and subordinated class.








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Kristen Philipkoski read and liked Richard's review of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West:

"Dee Brown, Head Librarian at the University of Illinois, has written a number of histories and novels with the American West and Civil War as his main themes, both before and after he wrote "Bury My Heart" while in his 60's. Almost 40 years...more Dee Brown, Head Librarian at the University of Illinois, has written a number of histories and novels with the American West and Civil War as his main themes, both before and after he wrote "Bury My Heart" while in his 60's. Almost 40 years after its first printing, this book is still in print. It shows that the common perceptions of the "winning of the West" have been based on a flawed viewpoint, since they do not represent a winning proposition for all Americans. Brown writes from an alternative perspective of looking through the eyes of the Indian, by looking East instead of West, toward the source of the downfall of the tribes who inhabited the Great Plains, Southwestern Desert and Pacific Northwest.

The title of the book is derived from a phrase in the poem "American Names" by Stephen Vincent Benet. A film version of the book, based on its last two chapters, was aired by HBO Films in 2007. The title of the book was also used in a song by Buffy Sainte-Marie.


The book's historical context occurs between 1860 and 1890 when, as Brown tells us, the culture and civilization of the American Indian was finally destroyed.

A reoccurring process is depicted in which the members of each tribe, in turn, found their fortunes changed from living freely in their ancestral homelands to living as wards of the federal government, usually in a state of neglect, on reservations. "Bury My Heart" contains example after example of the broken treaties, unkept promises, undelivered food and clothing or annuities needed for purchasing life necessities by the Indians.

The process that led to this plight usually started with a commission being sent from Washington to negotiate a treaty for ceding some native land for construction of a road or railroad right-of-way. Forts would be build along the way for the protection of commerce, and a flood of land speculators and settlers would come into the area in numbers that the Indians never anticipated. Land "reserved" for the natives to live on would usually be trespassed upon, especially when gold was discovered on Indian land. Representatives of the tribes, who, Brown states, exhibited almost universal trust in the original government treaty negotiators, would be surprised to find their pleas for enforcement of the treaties' perpetual protections of their rights to fall on deaf ears. Despite the best diplomatic efforts of some of the Indian leaders, violence would usually erupt.

Thus the wheels were set in motion to subdue the "savages" by sending the Army against them. The Indians were good fighters and knew how to survive in their homelands. However, they had the disadvantage of constantly having to move people of all ages and their possessions in order to elude a pursuing Army, which could stay in the field until the natives were worn out and starved from running. Occasionally the Army would get the jump on a whole tribal encampment and subdue it by a process of wholesale massacre against all inhabitants, young and old, as occurred at Sand Creek and at the Washita. This is a simplification of complex events that unfolded in different ways at different times, but it demonstrates how the legal cards were stacked against the native Americans.

Brown has been criticized for repetitious reporting because he has documented repeating scenarios of disaster for numerous tribes. The book is, however, a comprehensive indictment of the governmental incompetency and corruption which broke the spirit of the western tribes. Specific mention is made of the "Indian Ring" which included officials ranging from the Grant administration's Secretary of War to Indian Agents who were taking bribes from companies with licenses to trade on the reservations. Little public outrage was stirred up when this and other scandals erupted in Washington, since the common perception of Indian relations at the time was based on the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, in which the white race was determined to be destined to take over the earth from inferior, aboriginal races.

Brown has meticulously researched and reported the subjugation of Manuelito and the Navahos; Little Crow and the Santee Sioux; Black Kettle and the Southern Cheyennes; Red Cloud and the Oglala Sioux; Cochise and Geronimo of the Apache; Satanta of the Kiowas; Ten Bears of the Comanches; Kintpuash (Captain Jack) of the Modocs; Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce; Little Wolf and Dull Knife of the Northern Cheyennes; Standing Bear of the Poncas; Ouray of the Utes....

By 1890, all of the great western tribes were remnants of what they once were. The mighty Sioux, who with their allies defeated Long Hair Custer at the Little Big Horn in 1876, found themselves forced to give up all but a 35,000 "Great Sioux Reservation" within a year of that victory when the U.S. Congress moved to pass a law voiding the 1868 treaty which had given them the Black Hills "forever." By 1890, their leaders had been coerced into breaking up their land holdings into small parcels surrounded by land grabbed by white immigrants, for $1.50 per acre.

Hope was restored to the Indians through one last desperate development, which explains the choice of wording for the title of the book. A Paute Messiah named Wovoka founded a new religion, the Ghost Dance. News spread around the reservations like wildfire, about the future arrival of a Christ who would visit the Indians and renew the earth the following spring. This Christ was an Indian, who would bury the whites with a new layer of soil over the earth and bring back the buffalo and the Indians' dead ancestors. The path to salvation was to constantly dance the Ghost Dance.

The government became absolutely paranoid about all of this new incessant dancing on the reservations and wanted it stopped. Lists were for names of the "fomenters of disturbances." Sitting Bull, famous leader of the Sioux, was on the list even though he had warned his followers against engaging in the dance; he was assassinated when Indian police were ordered to arrest him on Standing Rock Reservation.

The fate of another accused fomenter, Big Foot of the Minneconjou, provided the foundation for the selection of the title of this book. He was taking his band to safety at the Pine Ridge agency when he was intercepted by the calvary 13 days after Sitting Bull was killed. The Indians were instructed to set up their tepees at an Army camp along Wounded Knee Creek during the evening of December 28, 1890. The next morning, the calvary commander ordered the Indians disarmed prior to arresting Big Foot and others on their list. A shot was fired during an argument over the surrendering of someone's rifle, and violence ensued. The few disarmed Indian warriors fought hand-to-hand with soldiers while their families tried to escape, but most were caught in the crossfire of the Army artillery which had been trained on the tents of the Indian encampment. According to Brown, 300 of the total 350 Indians at Wounded Knee were killed there, including Big Foot.

Dee Brown makes extensive use of the oral histories created from the translated and transcribed verbal statements Indian leaders made during councils with white officials, particularly during the 1870's and 1880's. These provide a record of supporting evidence for showing the inaccuracies in the traditional myths of America's creation theory, and for debunking the prevalent stereotypical attitudes toward aboriginal peoples. Quotes from many of these statements, showing the eloquence and reasonableness of the Indian treaty council representatives, are used to preface each chapter. Unfortunately, as Brown laments, the Indians had no one willing to publish and disseminate their stories contemporaneously with the events they describe.













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