Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

by Dee Brown

Americans who have always looked westward when reading about this period should read this book facing eastward.

in an age without heroes, they are perhaps the most heroic of all Americans.

One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk. —TASHUNKA WITKO (CRAZY HORSE)

The earth was created by the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was. … The country was made without lines of demarcation, and it is no man’s business to divide it.

If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it he will find it, and that is what the Indians are doing now when they ask you to give them the things that were promised them in the past;

“The white man knows how to make everything,” he said, “but he does not know how to distribute it.”

The people did not know; they did not care. They snatched at the hope. They screamed like crazy men to Him for mercy. They caught at the promise they heard He had made.