Dee Brown - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (2009 Blackstone Edition, Originally published in 1970)

V6, Read by Grover Gardner, Unabridged
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bury-my-heart-at-wounded-knee-dee-brown/1102898531?ean=9780606265867

Overview
Traditional texts glory in our nation's western expansion, the great conquest of the virgin frontier. But how did the original Americans -- the Dakota, Nez Perce, Ute, Ponca, Cheyenne, Navaho, Apache, and others -- feel about the coming of the white man, the expropriation of their land, the destruction of their way of life? What really happened to Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Cochise, Red Cloud, Little Wolf, and Sitting Bull as their people were killed or driven onto reservations during decades of broken promises, oppression, and war?
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a meticulously documented account of the systematic plunder of the American Indians during the second half of the nineteenth century, battle by battle, massacre by massacre, broken treaty by broken treaty. Here -- reconstructed in vivid and heartbreaking detail -- is their side of the story. We can see their faces and hear their voices as they tried desperately to live in peace and harmony with the white man.

With forty-nine photographs of the great chiefs, their wives and warriors; with the words of the Indians themselves, culled from testimonies and transcripts and previously unpublished writings; with a straight-forward, eloquent, and epic style, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee presents a unique and disturbing history of the American West.

Library Journal
This 1970 volume greatly changed the view of pioneers' westward advancement. Based largely on primary source materials, this volume details how white settlers forced Indian tribes off the plains, often simply by killing them. Though Hollywood and penny dreadfuls portrayed Indians as red devils who launched unprovoked attacks on innocent homesteaders, Brown's research shows that the opposite is closer to the truth. The text is buttressed with numerous period photos. An essential purchase.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_My_Heart_at_Wounded_Knee

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by American writer Dee Brown is a history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century that expresses a Native American perspective of the injustices and betrayals of the US government. Brown portrays the government's dealings as continued efforts to destroy the culture, religion, and way of life of Native American peoples in describing the people's displacement through forced relocations and years of warfare waged by the United States federal government. Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor is often considered a 19th-century precursor to Dee Brown's writing.

Prior to the publication of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown had become well versed in the history of the American Frontier. Having grown up in Arkansas, Brown developed a keen interest in the American West and, during his graduate education at George Washington University and his career as a librarian for both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he wrote numerous books on the subject. Brown's works maintained a focus on the American West, but ranged anywhere from western fiction to histories to even children's books. Many of Brown's books revolved around similar Native American topics, including his Showdown at Little Bighorn (1964) and The Fetterman Massacre (1974).

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was first published in 1970 to generally strong reviews. Published at a time of increasing American Indian activism, the bestseller has never gone out of print and has been translated into 17 languages. The title is taken from the final phrase of a 20th-century poem titled "American Names" by Stephen Vincent Benet. The full quotation, "I shall not be here/I shall rise and pass/Bury my heart at Wounded Knee," appears at the beginning of Brown's book. Although Benet's poem is not about the plight of Native Americans, Wounded Knee was the location of the last major confrontation between the U.S. Army and American Indians.